Nightmare Passage

by James Axler

"And dark," J.B. commented.

  "And dark," Shukeli echoed agreeably. "Some­times men need the dark, need it private." His voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper as he ran his fingertips up Ryan's right biceps. "I know you know what I mean."

  "Sure," Ryan said, and hit him as hard as he could in the middle of his swag belly.

  The stomachs of some fat men are deceptively solid. Shukeli's wasn't—it was all flab and at the moment of impact, Ryan's fist sank into it like a finger jabbed into dough.

  Shukeli doubled up, gagging, clutching at his middle. A string of saliva drooled from his lower lip. He didn't fall, and Ryan didn't act on his im­pulse to jack a knee into his face. As the man fought to get breath into his lungs, Ryan reached out and ran a finger under his double chins, up to his ear. He pinched the lobe savagely, twisting at the same time.

  Shukeli made mewling noises. Ryan leaned down and whispered into his ear, "I know you know what I mean, you stupe bastard. We're not interested in your blue-boy pastimes. Keep that in mind and we'll get along fine for the short time we're here. You don't keep that in mind and you die. Understand?"

  Shukeli's "Yes" was a faint burble.

  Ryan released him. "Good. Let us know when it's time for our shift."

  The warden tried to straighten, but opted to re­main in a slightly stooped posture as he shambled away on unsteady legs.

  Looking after him, J.B. said sourly, "We're not winning any popularity contests in the holy city of Aten."

  "Good," Ryan replied flatly. "I'd be a hell of a lot more worried if we were."

  Chapter Eighteen

  Ryan had never really devoted too much thought to how ancient peoples had constructed massive megalithic structures. Even the magnificent step pyramid he and his friends had seen still standing in the jun­gles of Amazonia several months before had failed to rouse his curiosity.

  He retained a memory from a picture book he had read as a child, an illustration depicting half-naked slaves working like oxen, yoked to huge stones and dragging them up earthen ramps while overseers lashed their straining backs with whips.

  When he and J.B. followed the workers out of the barracks at the afternoon period of labor, he received a distinct surprise. Near the end of the long line of aproned men, they marched out of the walled com­pound and into open ground. They looked up the great pyramid, a man-made mountain gleaming white and awesome in the noonday sun.

  Both he and the Armorer gaped at the most mas­sive and finely engineered structure they had ever seen. It was almost too awesome to comprehend, and Ryan had to consciously resist the impulse to pinch himself. As it was, he stared so long and so hard without blinking in the blaze of sunlight that his eye began to sting and water. He and the column of workers were a hundred yards from the pyramid's base, yet the immensity of it completely filled his field of vision.

  J.B. muttered, "It's got to be four hundred feet tall, and about seven hundred feet square at its wid­est point. God only knows how many millions of blocks are there."

  A rangy, middle-aged man standing behind him said blandly, "Actually, once the capstone is put in place, it'll be 481 feet tall. It's 756 square. There are probably about two million blocks. It's designed to be an exact duplicate of the Great Pyramid of Cheops at Giza."

  The man paused, smiled and added, "For an un­educated guess, you didn't do too badly. You've got a good eye. Mebbe you should be working with the royal architects."

  Without looking at the man, J.B. asked, "How long have you been working on it? Ten years at least."

  "No, just a little over two."

  Tearing his eyes away from the monument, he stared distrustfully at the man who had supplied the information. "Bullshit. I don't know old Egypt from old eggs, but I know it took at least a generation to build the original pyramid."

  "Longer, probably," the man replied. "But Pha­raoh expanded on the original construction tech­niques."

  "How do you know so much?" Ryan challenged.

  The man shrugged. "I've been working at the site since it was staked out. My name is Fasa."

  "Is that your real name or your Aten name?" J.B. asked.

  Fasa seemed to experience momentary difficulty in understanding the question. "Since I live in Aten, I guess Fasa is my real name."

  He didn't ask their names, and neither J.B. nor Ryan provided them.

  When they drew closer to the enormous megalith, Ryan and J.B. saw the double-railed track extending out of the compound and stretching upward, sup­ported by a complex and very solid looking frame­work of beams and cross braces. The angle of the track's incline was gentle and gradual, eventually leading up to the very apex of the pyramid.

  The metal cubes rolled along on their casterlike wheels, drawn by a heavy winch-and-pulley device attached to a pair of scaffolds on the side of the structure, one above the track, one below it. Men operated the winches by turning long crank handles.

  It required ten minutes to climb to the top of the pyramid, scaling a stair sunk into the stone-block facade. By the time they reached it, they were per­spiring heavily and panting. At that height, the sun seemed only an arm's length away.

  A brisk-looking overseer bustled up to Ryan and J.B. "You're the newcomers. Get to work removing the blocks from the molds."

  Ryan glanced at J.B., who shrugged, and both turned to obey.

  To their surprise, the labor wasn't quite as back-breaking or as dangerous as they supposed. A fresh wind played over the top of the pyramid, which helped to offset a little of the debilitating heat.

  Through close observation and by asking a few questions, they came to understand not only the ba­sic engineering theory but the construction tech­niques and materials.

  The building blocks for the pyramid weren't slav­ishly quarried and hauled; they were cast on the spot. The key of the process involved the aluminum and silicon that made up common clays. When al­kali, a common substance in the desert, was added in the right proportion, the aluminum bonded tightly to both the oxygen and silicon in the clay.

  Pharaoh had developed a powder containing sili­con and aluminum that, when added to an alkali-saturated liquid, formed a molecular glue. Limestone and granite were stirred into the mixture and poured into a mold. The acidic sap from cactus dissolved the larger pieces of limestone. Exposed to a low heat for a few hours, the puttylike substance became stone.

  According to Fasa, who seemed to take pleasure in acting as a mentor for the newcomers, ancient Egyptian stonemasons understood mineral chemistry enough to transform stone into a plastic, moldable compound.

  "After all," he said, "the Egyptians knew enough food chemistry to make wine, beer and vin­egar. And their embalming techniques are proof they understood body chemistry, too."

  Ryan and J.B.'s assigned task was to roll the metal-walled molds containing the dried casing blocks and put them into proper position. The sides of the cubes were equipped with small hinges. Once the block was in place, the mold was easily re­moved, joining the block with the others so precisely that there was barely a hairbreadth in between.

  Fasa explained that the center of the pyramid was hollow, comprising a Grand Gallery and several chambers honeycombed with crawl-spaces and air shafts.

  Something else they learned over the course of that hot, sweaty afternoon was how little the laborers resented their servitude. Building the monument to Pharaoh, their god-king, left them with no other re­sponsibilities than obeying orders, and they were es­sentially content with that.

  "What happens when the pyramid is com­pleted?" Ryan asked Fasa at one point.

  "There will be a great ceremony and celebration. Pharaoh will drink in the sekhem energy drawn down from Osiris by the pyramid."

  "I mean, what will you and the others do? Don't you want to be free?"

  Fasa thought it over, frowned and shook his head. "I wouldn't like that. Who would take care of me? How would I get food? I like to eat. Don't you?"

  Ryan considered the query rhetorical, so he didn't
bother with a response.

  The sun didn't begin its decline until well after seven o'clock—at least, J.B. estimated that was the time, since their chrons had been confiscated with the rest of their belongings.

  Overseers shouted back and forth across the pyr­amid, and like automatons, the laborers stopped working and lined up at the stair. As before, they marched down, two men across. In some ways, the descent was more difficult than the ascent, because the shadows had thickened. One misstep could result in a bone-breaking fall.

  Deep twilight darkened the sky when Ryan and J.B. set their sandaled feet on solid ground again. They heaved audible and simultaneous sighs of relief and marched back into the walled compound, toward the dormitory.

  Shukeli stood by the door and when he saw them, he beckoned for them to step out of formation. The fat man snapped to J.B., "Not you, just One-eye here."

  J.B. hesitated, but when Ryan nodded to him, he stepped back into line and was swept out of sight by the column of marching men.

  Ryan regarded Shukeli solemnly. "Payback plan or what?"

  A flush of anger colored Shukeli's chins and sag­ging jowls. "Someone wants to see you. Come with me."

  He turned and walked along the side of the bar­racks, not bothering to check if Ryan was following him or not. Ryan caught up with him before he turned the corner, senses on full alert, muscles tens­ing and tightening.

  Rather than the ambush he expected, he saw a large pavilion erected in an open lot. Banners flut­tered from poles driven into the ground near the en­trance.

  "In there," Shukeli growled. "The royal archi­tect's office."

  "Why does the royal architect want to see me?"

  Shukeli lifted a sloping shoulder in a shrug, as if the matter were of little importance or interest to him. "How do I know? I was told to fetch you. I fetched you. Do what you want from here on out."

  With a surprising quickness for one so bulky, Shukeli turned smartly on his toes and stalked away in the direction they had come.

  Ryan studied the pavilion suspiciously, seeing no sign of movement in or around it. A single light burned from within. He strode purposefully forward, thrusting aside the door flap.

  A brass lamp suspended from a support pole cast the interior with a wavery yellow illumination. Di­rectly beneath the lamp, seated at a paper-covered table was the hard, bronze figure of Akhnaton. He looked up as Ryan entered, and even at a distance, his crimson eyes shone like baleful flames.

  He wore a simple brown leather belted jerkin that bore a disk worked in gold thread upon the breast. His head was bare, and he was completely alone.

  Ryan cursed his split second of hesitation, then he crossed the dozen feet separating him from the giant man of bronze. "You're the royal architect?"

  "Among my other functions," Akhnaton replied in his thrumming, controlled voice. "Would you consider this our second or third meeting, Cawdor?"

  Ryan didn't rise to the bait. His stomach muscles fluttered in adrenaline-inspired spasms. He tried to meet the man's crimson gaze, unblinking and un­flinching. "What do you want?"

  Akhnaton leaned back in his camp chair, looking him up and down appraisingly. "No need to be afraid, Cawdor. If I wanted you dead, vultures would be feasting on your liver by now."

  "I'm not afraid of you, Hell Eyes."

  A rueful smile touched the man's lips. "I haven't been called that in many, many years. And then, not to my face."

  "I asked you a question—what do you want?"

  Akhnaton gestured expansively. "I have every­thing I want. An empire. A dynasty."

  "Except," Ryan said, "a queen to share it with."

  "You're far more astute than I gave you credit for. Perhaps a brain does lurk inside that grubber's shell." Akhnaton paused and added, "You're right, Cawdor. I have no queen. You can help me to rectify that."

  Ryan's carefully maintained neutral expression slipped for a moment. "How?"

  "I want you to tell Krysty Wroth that you under­stand she and I are fated to be together and you are releasing her from whatever vows she may have made to you. In exchange for that, I will grant you and your companions safe conduct back to the re­doubt and the gateway. I will give you anything you need."

  Ryan stared at the bronze mask, his mind awash with conflicting emotions. He said nothing for a very long time. Finally, he surprised Akhnaton and, to an extent, himself. He laughed, loud and scornfully.

  "My proposition amuses you?" Akhnaton's tone was cold and hard.

  "Deeply. I thought you were some kind of super mind mutie. Why don't you just mentally force me to do your bidding?"

  Akhnaton didn't answer.

  "Could it be," Ryan continued sarcastically, "that Krysty would instantly sense that you had me in your power and tell you what I'm telling you now…to go fuck yourself?"

  The shock was so unexpected, so terrible that Ryan nearly collapsed. Time, space, the universe darkened and turned. His surroundings shattered into a kaleidoscope of flying fragments. He drifted among them, and the sudden terror of it dragged a scream up his throat. He clamped his jaws shut on it. The swirling fragments coalesced into the same image, infinitely repeated—a grinning, malevolent skull, the fires of hell erupting from the eye sockets.

  Ryan had engaged in hundreds of battles in his life, but never one where a powerful will tried to beat down his spirit. But the image of Krysty and Dean were his anchors in reality. Ryan forced him­self to stare at the hundreds of thousands of fiendish, grinning skulls. His love for Krysty and his son was a chain that a psychic assault couldn't break. He willed the skulls to fade, demanding that the world steady around him.

  Quite suddenly, he was in the pavilion again, standing before Akhnaton. His heart trip-hammered in his chest, his head ached and his body was filmed with cold sweat. But he smiled, a contemptuous twist of his mouth.

  In a low voice, Akhnaton said, "You stinking scavenger. You dung beetle of a man. I could kill you where you stand, give you a cerebral hemor­rhage, cause your aorta to burst."

  Breath rasping between his bared teeth, hands quivering, Ryan demanded, "Why don't you do it, then?"

  Akhnaton didn't answer.

  "You won't do it because Krysty will know. And if she doesn't hate you now, she will when she finds out."

  "Listen to me, Cawdor. I was created to impose order on chaos. All of man's old social arrangements were destroyed. Lawlessness, terror, anarchy run un­checked. Only my vision and my resolve can prevail to restore a measure of peace and harmony on the world."

  "By imposing a new form of terror," Ryan re­torted.

  "Don't goad me. I don't really expect you, a wan­dering, landless killer, to understand a fraction of my dream, a dynasty dedicated to virtue, as my namesake was dedicated to peace and justice. It is the only rational means to bring order out of chaos."

  "I've heard similar speeches before," the one-eyed man scoffed. "Distill it all down and it's noth­ing more than a cheap justification for tyranny."

  "You're a fool. A venal, dirt-grubbing scavenger."

  "And you're just another fucking mutie with an attitude."

  Ryan shot out his left leg in a sweeping kick that caught the underside of the table and heaved it up­ward into Akhnaton's face. He and the camp chair tipped over amid a heavy thud and a bellow of out­raged surprise.

  The one-eyed man was atop him in a shaved slice of a second, his warrior reflexes and fury driving him forward, knees slamming solidly into the man's flat stomach.

  He pistoned both fists into the bronzed face be­neath him in a flurry of jabs and left and right hooks. Akhnaton's head rocked back and forth under the steady tattoo, blood springing from his nostrils, fly­ing from split lips.

  "Come on, Pharaoh," Ryan snarled. He hit him on the chin, bouncing the back of his head against the ground. "Give me a cerebral hemorrhage."

  A fierce downward jab opened a gash above Akhnaton's eyebrow.

  Akhnaton tried to exchange punches with Ryan, but his flailing
fists missed their weaving target, or rebounded from his forearms. He bucked beneath him, hands darting for the one-eyed man's throat.

  Ryan caught the wrists, noting fearfully it was like grabbing two bars of tempered steel. They tum­bled over the ground, locked in each other's arms, tearing at each other like raging beasts. They grap­pled, and Akhnaton's fingers slipped on his oppo­nent's sweat-slick arms, his grasp so powerful Ryan's skin peeled away in strips as if it were scalded.

  Ryan realized that although Akhnaton's strength was immense, his combat acumen and skills weren't even up to the levels possessed by Dean. He had never fought hand-to-hand for survival before, and Ryan took vicious advantage of him. He kicked him, he clawed him, he head-butted him, he bit him, he tried to gouge out his crimson eyes.

  But Ryan knew that because of his adversary's superior strength he couldn't kill him, so he single-mindedly inflicted as much pain and humiliation on Akhnaton as he could.

  Then a bronze hand closed around his throat. Ryan tried first to poke his fingers into Akhnaton's eyes, but he straightened his arm and his hands couldn't reach him. He came up to his knees with Ryan struggling to pry those steely fingers apart. He kicked at him desperately, but his apronlike garment impeded his movements.

  Akhnaton's hand mercilessly crushed tendons, muscles and ligaments against his vertebrae. Ryan was a strong man, far stronger than average, but he felt like a kitten, helpless in the hands of a sadist. Blood thundered in his ears.

  Akhnaton flung him aside as if he were a dummy stuffed with straw. He landed flat on his right side, the impact knocking what little breath he had out through his nostrils and mouth. He lay where he had been tossed, his face against the ground, trying to cough, trying to breathe, trying to move.

  Through the blurry vision of his eye, he saw Akhnaton stagger to his feet. Blood streamed from a score of wounds all over his body, his face a bat­tered mask. He touched his lacerated lip, frowned at the crimson wetness shining on his fingertips and said unsteadily, "I underestimated you, Cawdor. You held your own in a face-to-face with me. I'll be damned. You actually hurt me."

  Akhnaton's voice held no anger, only bewilder­ment.