Seti's Heart

by Kiernan Kelly

  “Well, I put in for the assistant slot with the curator of relics—”

  “Perry? Are you kidding?” Leo protested. “That’s a fucking death sentence, Logan. I can hear the bells tolling for your career now.”

  “Shut up, Leo. What else could he do?” Chris growled. Logan couldn’t help but smile when Leo jumped as Chris’s sharp elbow connected with his ribs. “Not everybody is content to live off love, you know.”

  “You’re going to meet a man.”

  “What?” Logan looked at Jason, whose eyes were wide and unfocussed, his expression gone blank. He seemed to stare through Logan, seeing something beyond him that no one else could see, and it was giving Logan a severe case of the creeps. He hated when Jason went Twilight Zone on them.

  “Shit. Here we go—step right up and see Jason the Magnificent predict the future while juggling beer nuts and cocktail napkins,” Leo said, rolling his eyes.

  “A man with no heart.”

  “Oh, great. Let me guess—he’s an out-of-work actor whose last gig was the Tin Man in a rotary club presentation of The Wiz, right? Just what I fucking need,” Logan groaned, rolling his eyes. “C’mon, Jase. You know I hate it when you start with this psychic bullshit.”

  “You will give him what he needs most.” Jason’s voice was a flat monotone, without the slightest trace of inflection. Logan suppressed a shudder.

  “It’s more like psychic diarrhea. When he gets like this, he’s got more shit coming out of his mouth than a sewer line,” Chris said, waving his hand in front of Jason’s face. “C’mon, man, snap out of it!”

  “Earth to Jason, come in, Jason,” Leo snorted. “A heartless man. Sounds like a fun date. Well, it could be worse, Logan. He could have said you were going to meet a woman and hop the fence.”

  “I’m not going to meet anybody, unless you mean Dr. Perry,” Logan said. He drained the last of his beer and then refilled his mug. White foam sloshed over the side of the mug, pooling on the table. “Right now, I couldn’t afford to go on a date, and I certainly don’t need anybody complicating my life. It’s fucked up enough as it is.” He gave Jason a shove. “Knock it off, Jason,” he growled.

  Jason blinked. “What happened?”

  “You know damn well what happened. Why do you insist on playing these Psychic Hotline parlor games?” Chris asked, frowning. “It’s getting old, Jason.”

  “Honest to God, I didn’t even know I was doing it,” Jason protested. He looked pale to Logan, and there were beads of sweat on his forehead, even though it was chilly in the bar. “One minute I was looking at Logan, and the next…. Did I say something?”

  “Yeah. You said I was going to meet a heartless man. What exactly did you see, Jase?” Logan prompted. There was something about Jason’s expression that sent a shiver down Logan’s spine, sobering him.

  “I don’t know. It was dark and hot. Windy. There was a lot of sand.”

  “Like on the beach?” Leo asked.

  “No, more like the desert,” Jason said. He lifted a mug to his mouth, his hand shaking so badly that beer slopped over the side onto his shirt.

  “What else?” Logan prompted.

  “There was a man. He was huge, like a fucking giant, and he had the head of an alligator,” Jason said, sliding the back of his hand across his mouth. “I didn’t understand what he was saying, but he was sorely pissed off about something.”

  “Sounds like Setekh, the Egyptian god of chaos. That would probably make it a crocodile head, not an alligator, although no one’s really sure what animal he was associated with. Why the hell would you channel him?” Chris asked. “He was the bad boy of the Egyptian pantheon.”

  “Hell, boys! Deserts, giants, and heartless crocodile men? Sounds like a party to me.” Leo grinned.

  Logan forced his lips to curl in a smile, but inside he was still feeling discomforted. Jason’s “prophecies” were usually vague, easily interpreted to fit neatly into anyone’s life. Not this time. This time there had been something ominous in his voice, and it had chilled Logan right to the bone.

  Lifting his mug, he drank deeply. The night was young, and he was well into his second pitcher, but try as he might, he couldn’t get his buzz back.

  Chapter Two

  “DR. PERRY?” Logan called, edging his way past a gigantic wooden drum, chipped and pitted and layered with a half inch of dust. It looked to be of Eastern origin, perhaps Japanese. The basement consisted of several dozen rows of ceiling-to-floor metal shelves, each one choked with boxes and crates. The mess spilled over into every corner of the large room, filling it completely and leaving very little room to walk.

  Clearing his throat, Logan tried again, louder this time. “Dr. Perry?”

  “Back here. Mind your step, boy, and don’t touch anything!”

  The voice was steady and firm, carrying none of the tremble usually associated with advanced age. However, the years had not been as kind to Lincoln Perry’s body as they had to his voice. Stooped and slight, he was completely bald except for a monk’s fringe of white hair that fell in thin wisps over the collar of the lab coat. One might be tempted to think he had more hair growing in his eyebrows than he did on the rest of his head. Bushy and blindingly white, his brows were wild and unkempt, shadowing eyes set deeply in a heavily wrinkled face.

  But those eyes sparkled with intelligence as they turned to meet Logan’s. “You’re my new ass?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “My new assistant. But until you’ve proven yourself to be brighter than the average lump of oatmeal, you’re an ass.” Cackling at his own wit, Perry turned back to the task he’d been working on—labeling what Logan could see was a large gray human bone of indeterminate age. “Make yourself useful and help me wrap this thing.”

  Logan moved, anxious to prove himself smarter than a bowl of Quaker Oats. He’d be damned if he’d spend the rest of the year labeled as Perry’s ass. Carefully, he rolled out the thin gauze. He helped Perry wrap the bone securely, before placing it in a box. Perry sealed it, and then wrote Homo sapiens, thighbone, circa 1920 on the cover with a black Sharpie.

  “Why are we keeping a human leg bone from the twentieth century? It’s not exactly an antiquity,” Logan said, lifting the crate as Perry instructed, carrying it. “There are graveyards full of bones like these everywhere.”

  “Why don’t they ever send me someone with half a brain?” Perry sniffed, shooting Logan a haughty look as he led him between the rows. “It’s not an antiquity now, but what about three thousand years from now? There were graveyards full of bones in ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome too, you know. Ever heard of the catacombs? But you wouldn’t question my storing one of those bones.”

  Okay, so Perry was a nutcase, Logan decided. He must have spent too many years down in the dungeons breathing in the dust and mold. Logan sighed. If the last five minutes were any indication, it was going to be a long, long year.

  “Put it up there, third shelf down from the top,” Perry ordered, pointing to a spot on a shelf well above Logan’s head.

  Logan tucked the box under his arm and manhandled a ladder over to where Perry stood, waiting impatiently, tapping his foot. He climbed up and then wedged the box between another labeled Branding iron, Wyoming, circa 1800, and one that read Jawbone, Canis lupus familiaris, circa 1994.

  There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason in the storing of items. No alphabetical order, no grouping according to genus, nada. Just stuff, most of it worthless, randomly stuck into whatever space could be found to accommodate it.

  “Professor?”

  “What?”

  “How do you find anything?” Logan asked. He almost cringed, knowing that Perry would see the question as yet another indication of what he perceived to be Logan’s sadly below-average intelligence quotient. “I don’t understand your system. Is it computerized?”

  Perry mumbled something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like moron. He turned away, obviously expecting Logan to
follow. “I keep all that information right here, boy,” he said, tapping the side of his shiny pate. “I don’t need any fancy computer programs.”

  “But… there must be thousands of artifacts down here!”

  “Hundreds of thousands. Most of which have been down here so long that they’ve been forgotten by everyone but me,” Perry said. Logan could swear he detected a sorrowful note in Perry’s voice but decided he must have been imagining things. No pernicious old goat like Perry could possibly be sentimental about anything.

  Up and down the rows they wandered, Perry grumbling to himself every step of the way while Logan followed behind. Eventually they came to the far side of the basement. Perry stopped, pointing to an unmarked door. “See this door?” he asked, as if Logan were not standing two feet in front of it.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Don’t ever open it. Ever. Opening this door means instant termination. Understand?”

  “What’s—”

  “Do you understand?” Perry snarled, jabbing a bony finger into Logan’s chest.

  “Yes, sir. I understand.” Good God, the man was a raving lunatic! Logan was seriously beginning to doubt the wisdom in taking the position as Perry’s assistant. No wonder it had still been available. No one else, besides Logan, was stupid enough to want it.

  Perry turned away in a huff, heading toward another door.

  “Dr. Perry, what will my responsibilities be?” Logan asked, half expecting Perry to tell him that he was to be Chief Idiot and Ass-kisser.

  Perry sighed, as if Logan’s question was a huge imposition. “You’ll fetch new acquisitions from upstairs, bring ’em down here. You’ll make my coffee, which I take black. You’ll dust. And most of all, you’ll stay the hell out of my way,” Perry answered. He walked into his office, a small, dark cubby that was marked by a dull brass plate engraved with Perry’s name, and then slammed the door shut in Logan’s face.

  Staring at the scarred oak door, Logan blinked. He wrapped his fingers around the doorknob, ready to burst in and tell Perry exactly what he could do with his assistant’s position, but hesitated. He couldn’t just quit. He had bills to pay—the rent, the utilities—and it would be nice if he could eat something besides ramen noodles once in a while. Logan’s hand fell to his side, his shoulders slumping dejectedly. Like it or not, he was stuck being Perry’s assistant, at least until a better opportunity came along.

  Dammit.

  Picking up a feather duster, Logan reluctantly began his new job.

  TWO MONTHS later, Logan was still dusting, and there didn’t seem to be an end in sight.

  The more his feather duster whacked across the boxes that were stacked on the shelves and the various larger, shroud-covered pieces that were wedged in around the perimeter of the room, the thicker the layer of dust seemed to grow. It felt as if he lived in a perpetual cloud of grime, dust motes coloring his hair and clothes a whitish gray. His eyes were always itchy and watery, and his nose ran like a leaky faucet. He virtually lived on over-the-counter allergy medications.

  During the entire time he’d been there, he’d barely heard a word from Perry—just a shout now and then for fresh coffee or an order to run up to the main floor to pick up a waiting artifact (always accompanied by the obligatory growled warning not to drop it). Without exception, Perry examined, packaged, and labeled the artifacts by himself, leaving Logan the dubious honor of finding someplace in the crammed shelves to stick them.

  Where Logan would have liked to stick them was directly up Perry’s pompous, arrogant ass, and sideways, but he managed—barely—to restrain himself. Even the worst of his college professors, the few who had seemed hell-bent on making certain that Logan never graduated, had not been as surly or condescending as Perry. Now Logan understood why Perry had been relegated to the museum’s dungeons fifty years ago and left there to be as forgotten as half of the artifacts. He was an asshole, plain and simple, and unfit to interact with the surface dwellers.

  That afternoon had been one of the worst since Logan started his assistant’s position with Perry. It had begun when he’d brought down a ceramic vase from Acquisitions. It was nothing special—early twentieth century, a dime a dozen in any antique store on the East Coast. It had been donated to the museum by a wealthy, if eccentric, patron, and Acquisitions had taken one look at it and had condemned it to spend eternity in the dungeons. Not only was it common, it had a hairline crack that ran its length.

  Logan had dutifully carried it down to the basement and had presented it to Perry.

  That’s when the real trouble had started.

  Perry had immediately accused Logan of causing the crack in the vase, ignoring the toe tag that clearly stated that the vase had been damaged when it arrived at the museum. Within seconds Perry’s diatribe had rocketed into a full-fledged tantrum as he screamed at Logan at the top of his lungs, using every euphemism for stupid known to modern man and a half dozen more in ancient Latin and Greek.

  “I knew I should never have taken on such a dimwitted, irresponsible, moronic, half-wit like you! What was I thinking? I told them I didn’t need an assistant. Told them that the new generations being spit out by universities today were lazy and careless, but did they listen? No, they did not. ‘You’re getting on in years, Perry.’ ‘You shouldn’t be climbing those ladders, Perry.’ ‘You need to train someone to take over after you retire at the end of the year, Perry.’ Now look at what you’ve done!” Perry’s face grew red as he ranted, the veins in his temple throbbing visibly. “Idiot! Fool! Imbecile!”

  For ten full minutes Perry had railed against Logan, until he finally ran out of both steam and insults. With a final nonsensical order for Logan to mop every inch of the concrete floor until it was clean enough to eat off, Perry had huffed and puffed, grabbed his coat and briefcase, and left, leaving Logan standing shell-shocked in his wake.

  Well that explained a lot. Not that it excused his behavior, not by a long shot, but it did explain why Perry was behaving like such a shit toward Logan. He was being forced to retire, and evidently Logan was next in line to be crowned Dungeon Master.

  Logan leaned back against the wall, looking at the crowded basement with new eyes. Organize. Computerize. Optimize. Get rid of everything that had little or no historic value. Donate it or loan it out to lesser museums. In his mind’s eye Logan saw the dungeon transformed into a newer, brighter, more efficient storage facility. Yes, when he was promoted to curator of relics, there would be vast changes made. He’d bring the museum’s dungeons kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century.

  His eyes wandered across the room to the Vault, as he’d come to think of the one room in the dungeon that Perry had forbidden him from entering. If he was going to be the new curator, he should know what was in that room. He should. Really. It only made sense. He should take a peek, just to see what Perry was hiding in there.

  Maybe it was something illegal, like black market fossils or jewels. Logan certainly wouldn’t put it past Perry to hoard valuables, especially if they were ill-gotten gains.

  Logan’s curiosity got the better of him. Perry wouldn’t be back for a while, if at all. He had time to take a gander at what lay behind Door Number One without getting caught. Walking over to the Vault, Logan eyed the door warily, as if it might bite him if he tried to open it. It was identical to the one that guarded Perry’s office. A small latex glove dispenser was affixed to the wall on one side. There were no markings, nothing to tell Logan what might lie behind it. Worriedly, he looked for wires and contacts that might indicate the door was alarmed.

  “Stop being silly. Perry’s got you afraid of your own fucking shadow!” Logan admonished himself. “It’s just a door, like any other door in this basement.” Taking a deep breath to steady his nerves, he used a credit card to jimmy the old-fashioned lock.

  Creaking, the door swung open with only a slight push from Logan. Feeling along the wall, he found the light switch and flipped it on. A single naked low-watt bulb suspende
d from the ceiling on a thin wire flickered to life, casting the room in a weak yellowish light.

  Blinking, Logan took a moment to allow his eyes to adjust to the near dark. Peering in, they widened at what Perry had been keeping hidden in the room.

  It was a sarcophagus.

  Twelve feet long and four feet deep, covered in at least two inches of dust, it filled the small room nearly from one end to the other.

  Logan ran out of the Vault, returning a moment later with an anthropologist’s field kit. Carefully, he used a small whisk to brush the thick dust from the lid of the sarcophagus, revealing a life-sized, incredibly realistic effigy.

  It had been sculpted entirely in gold. At some point in the recent past, someone must have taken great pains to restore it, because there wasn’t a single trace of the patina of age anywhere on its magnificent exterior. The warm glow of the gold gleamed, even in the dim light of the Vault.

  What the hell was Perry thinking, hiding this wonder down here in the basement? Maybe it’s a fake, Logan wondered as he ran his gloved fingers reverently over the sleek golden effigy. Well, if it is a counterfeit, it’s the cleverest, most painstakingly authentic replica I’ve ever seen.

  It was Egyptian, if Logan wasn’t mistaken. The man who had been immortalized in gold must have been a high-ranking official, he thought absently, to warrant such a coffin. A chieftain, perhaps even a king.

  If the effigy were truly representative of the man buried within the sarcophagus, then he had been strikingly handsome when he’d been alive. He had had a high forehead, sharply defined cheekbones, and wide-spaced eyes. His nose had been straight, narrow at the bridge; his lips had been perfectly bowed and sensuously full.