For a long time after Sepet's story no one said anything. Now, it seemed, the world was again as it had always been, the night was just another night, with the stars stable in their places above. The Nile flowed as always, and the night-birds cried and hooted. But the lights and voices of the pursuing soldiers had vanished as completely as if the marsh had swallowed them.
Sihathor, after asking the opinions of each member of his family, praying to Set, and taking thought, decided that they had been saved by some beneficient power; the best thing he could do would be to try to keep his rendezvous with the high officials in the neighborhood of the pyramid. If they encountered soldiers again, well, he could revert to his identity as a poor fisherman and small trader, whose boat had been capsized by a hippopotamus. It was not an unlikely accident to meet with in the Nile, not even here near the metropolis of Memphis.
Once more he and his family set out on foot, heading inland from the boat. But now, feeling it necessary to detour widely from his previous route, Sihathor soon came into unfamiliar territory. The pyramid of course was visible even in the dark, but Sihathor was no longer confident of being able to reach the place of rendezvous. It was beside a canal, but he knew that more than one canal traversed the area, and all of those waterways were unfamiliar to him.
Not being able to find the two officials disturbed him, but not as much as the strange occurrences of the night. Yes, something very strange indeed was happening in the land tonight. Eventually he decided that the best thing to do was to lie low and wait for morning. No one could really blame him for failing to keep a rendezvous in an area where patrols of soldiers were searching actively.
Besides, all the rock-breaking implements, along with their means of making fire and most of their supplies, had been abandoned near the little tomb, and were probably lost for good.
After making their way back somewhat closer to the river and the marshes, the better to support their story of an upset boat, the family settled in as best they could to wait for dawn, taking turns at sleeping uneasily and standing watch.
They were now quite close to the great pyramid.
NINE
Scheffler was straining every muscle to run, trying his damnedest to propel his body straight up the gigantic stair-steps formed by the unfinished side of the Great Pyramid. But something was going wrong with his legs right from the start, and by the time he had taken the first couple of steps he was almost paralyzed, reduced to trying to crawl with painful slowness.
The dark-haired woman peering down at Scheffler from behind the golden triangle at the top of the pyramid had her pistol drawn and she was about to shoot him. Her blue eyes were deadly. But he had to keep on going up the great steps anyway, because below him there were crocodiles, and they were coming up. He could see the yellow eyes of the crocs and their great white teeth. Even with their stumpy legs they were climbing much faster than he could move. Scheffler let out a choked cry as one of the animals turned into a lion and bounded closer, and he whimpered as the lion sank its claws into his back.
And now a real, full-voiced cry burst out of Scheffler's throat, and with it he was jolted into wakefulness. Someone had actually been shaking him awake, strange fingers poking at his back.
"Good morning," said a voice. It was a bright, firm voice and very real. It wasn't Becky's voice, because she was still submerged in sleep and blankets, her blond head half buried in a pillow. The hand that had been shaking Scheffler was a man's, but the voice belonged to the woman who was standing at the foot of his bed. She and the two men with her were all dressed in what looked vaguely like ski jackets, wearing winter caps upon their heads, appropriate to the season. The men stood flanking Scheffler's bed, one on each side.
Good morning, the woman had said. It might indeed be morning technically, but the bedroom was still as dark as night. Barely enough light was coming in from the streets and buildings outside to let Scheffler see some features of his visitors' faces. He looked at them all and swallowed and lay still.
"Good morning," said the woman again, as if she were now satisfied that he was awake. She was dark, and looked quite young in the semi-darkness, and her voice was pleasantly nondescript. "We are the police. You may call me Olivia. And you are Thomas Scheffler."
"Police," Scheffler repeated stupidly.
"Not the Chicago police. Nor do we represent any other political entity with which you are familiar. But nevertheless we are police. I could show you our documents of identification, but I'm afraid you'd find them meaningless."
The speaker, like her companions, was tall and well-proportioned, and when she moved her head enough of her face became visible to suggest that she might be attractive, not that, just now, he cared. She was standing with her hands folded in front of her as if ready for prayer or meditation.
Scheffler sat up in bed. He rubbed his face with his hands. Somehow he was not really surprised by this intrusion. Net that he had been expecting it, exactly, but he had been expecting something, some kind of an intervention. Or at least part of him had been hoping for one. In fact, under his shock he could already feel an undercurrent of something like relief.
"What do you want?" he asked, and looked sideways again at Becky, who still had not stirred.
"Your companion is going to sleep through our interview," said the woman who had called herself Olivia. "I think we have no business with her. But we have with you."
"Oh." He looked at Becky again, then back to his interrogator. "What business?"
"We want you to answer some questions for us. We are police, as I have said, and we have evidence that a long series of crimes have been committed within our jurisdiction. So far I have no reason to think that you are guilty. But you certainly have information bearing on these crimes, and on the guilty parties."
So far the two men were only standing by, watching and listening in silence. Scheffler looked at Becky yet again. No movement there. He said: "I'd like to get up and put on my pants."
"Go ahead," cheerfully allowed Olivia. She made a gracious gesture.
The man standing at the right side of the bed moved courteously aside. Scheffler got up and pulled on the pants he'd left on the bedside chair, and then pulled his borrowed silk dressing gown over that. Being at least half dressed made him feel a little braver. He faced Olivia and squared his shoulders. "What right do you people have to come in here and ask me questions?"
"I have explained who we are. I must warn you that you are now temporarily under our jurisdiction. If you refuse to answer questions here, you will be taken elsewhere for questioning."
"That's kidnapping."
"In your legal system, yes. But our legal system will supersede yours whenever the two come into conflict." Olivia obviously had her answers ready, as if she had expected they might be needed. She sounded supremely confident, and still patient. The two men were waiting patiently too, watching Scheffler steadily. They were both built as big as he was, though one was a little shorter. The taller one had his arms folded, the other his hands, in ski gloves, hanging loose.
"If you're working under a legal system," Scheffler asked them, "then don't I have the right to counsel? Legal advice?"
Olivia continued to do the talking for her side. "If and when you are arrested, you will be provided the kind of counsel that I think you mean. But I don't think matters are going to come to that. I think you have become innocently involved."
One of the men said, in a voice so deep it was surprising: "If it's advice you want, the best advice anyone can give you right now is to co-operate with us."
Scheffler looked the three intruders over again, taking them in one after another. All three of them looked back with calm professional readiness. Becky slept on, breathing peacefully.
He sighed. "All right. What questions do you have?"
The woman turned her head and said something to one of the men in a language that Scheffler could not understand. The man turned and left the room.
She smiled at Scheffler t
hen. "How many trips through the timelock have you made?"
He tried to remember. Then suddenly something about the whole business struck him as very funny. Maybe it was his visitors' matter-of-fact approach; or his own calmness, almost relief, in the face of their questioning; or Becky's continuing to sleep. Whatever it was, Scheffler began to laugh. He bent over, and straightened up again, and wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his robe. It took him a little while to regain full control.
Apparently this reaction too was not unexpected; his interrogator still waited patiently.
"You know," Scheffler told her at last, "at first I thought it was an elevator."
Olivia allowed herself to share, to the extent of a brief smile, in his amusement. "Logical and natural under the circumstances," she reassured him. "How many trips?"
Scheffler thought back. "There were three, altogether. The first was very brief."
"And where did you go each time?"
Somehow it had never occurred to Scheffler until this moment that there might have been more than one possible destination. "Each time to the same place—in ancient Egypt. The Great Pyramid was under construction there—I could see it as soon as I climbed out of a hole in the rocks—so it could hardly have been anywhere else."
Olivia nodded, without comment. The man who had left the room now returned, carrying a small statuette, one of the items that Scheffler had brought back from his last trip, and left on a table in the library. The man who brought in the object now said something to the woman in their own language, and tossed his find on the foot of the bed.
She pulled a small device out from somewhere and touched it to the statuette; then she turned back to Scheffler. "How much gold did you bring back from there altogether? You won't incriminate yourself by answering. But it's very important that I know."
"Gold? None. On the first two trips I brought back nothing. Your man there has obviously found the collection of things I did bring back, on the third trip. That's all. Oh, except for one worn-out sandal in my backpack. I just picked that up as a sort of souvenir. Oh, and a cigarette butt."
"Cigarette butt? Why did you bother with that?"
"I don't know. It seemed incongruous, lying where it was. It seemed like evidence or something."
Olivia only looked at him. "Anything else?"
"No. As for the valuables—well, I didn't consider that I was stealing." That sounded foolish when he heard himself say it; still, it was true.
"Perhaps someone gave them to you to bring back here," Olivia suggested. When he hesitated over his answer, she added: "Let me assure you that we know about the two twentieth-century people who are still there. Even they may not be in serious legal trouble yet—but if I'm going to help them I have to know as much as possible about them. The truth of what they have been doing."
"I don't know what they've been doing. I saw only one of them, a young woman. Yes, she told me to bring the stuff, and I went along with what she said. I don't even know her name. I saw her only once, and that was brief. But I'll tell you what I can."
"Very good." His interrogator rewarded him with a broader smile. "You say that you've made three trips. Describe them all to me, in some detail please."
Scheffler did. The words flowed swiftly once he got started, and his sense of relief established itself more firmly.
Olivia took it all in. No one was making notes, but maybe, Scheffler supposed, they were somehow recording what he said.
When he paused, after completing his recital of the third trip, she nodded as if satisfied. "And now, tell me about your uncle—no, he's your great-uncle, isn't he?—Montgomery Chapel. When did you last see him?"
Scheffler told it all, as well as he could remember it, beginning with the first invitation from Uncle Monty to come to the apartment. If he had been willing to lie to keep Uncle Monty out of trouble, he wouldn't have had any idea what sort of lie would be helpful. Right now, based on actual experience, he didn't feel like sticking his neck out for Uncle Monty. He would prefer to trust Olivia. So far these self-proclaimed police seemed like decent and reasonable people and it was a relief to be able to tell his story to someone.
The patient questioning went on. The men, as if to make sure they got their turns in, each spoke up a couple of times, asking Scheffler in the same calm manner about some details of his story. From the overall course of the questioning, Scheffler got the idea that these people were more interested in Uncle Monty than in anything else—except, perhaps, in gold. They kept coming back to gold, but he thought they believed him when he kept insisting that he'd never taken any.
They were all four of them still standing in the bedroom. He might have to answer questions, but he'd be damned if he was going to invite these intruders to sit down.
"Anyone else involved?" Olivia asked him casually.
"In getting stuff from ancient Egypt? Not that I know of." Now Scheffler was beginning to feel tired. He wanted to sit down, and the bed was available, but Becky, snoring faintly, was still in it and he feared to wake her up. Also he feared that sitting would put him at some kind of psychological disadvantage.
"What about a man named Pilgrim? Or possibly Peregrinus?"
"Ah, him. Well, I don't know what he's involved in, but I've had a couple of phone calls from him since I moved in here. I think one of his messages is still recorded on the phone."
"What did he want?"
"To know how he could reach my uncle. I told him I didn't know."
Olivia said nothing to that. If the message was still on the phone, Scheffler decided, she and her men had probably already examined it.
Instead she said: "Tell me if you've ever seen this man," and brought a flat little item out of a pocket of her ski jacket. Scheffler, ready to be shown a photo, found himself looking at a wonder. He would have had to describe it as a holograph, but it was fancier than anything along that line he'd ever seen before. A complete molded image of a man's head, glowing in full color, sprang up from a small flat disk when Olivia held it on her palm. She rotated the bust this way and that, and when Scheffler stared at it without recognition she did something that called up changes in the hair, the beard, and the coloring of the image.
"No, I've never seen him, anywhere, anytime, that I can recall. But then I never, saw the man who phoned."
They asked Scheffler to show them the photos he had taken on his last trip to the land of the pyramid. He got them out of his dresser drawer, and Olivia looked them over. Then without apology she put them into a pocket of her jacket. "I don't suppose you made any copies of these? The process used by your camera is not one that routinely makes multiple copies, is it?"
"No. To both questions."
Abruptly, somehow surprisingly, Scheffler's visitors were ready to leave. Olivia told him: "We're taking along these things that you did bring back at the request of the young lady. And we're taking the sandal too. You will perhaps understand if I do not give you a receipt?"
He shrugged. He drew a deep breath. He felt relieved. "I think lean understand that," he said.
The lady said: "As for the other ancient items in this apartment, they have been here for decades, and to remove them now would probably be more disruptive than to leave them. Thank you for your cooperation, Tom. We're leaving now, and the chances are that you won't see us again—but it's not impossible that you will. I or one of my associates here might be back to see you within a few days. Because your formal testimony may be wanted, regarding the activities of Dr. Pilgrim and others."
"I suppose you can come and drag me away if you want me. But there won't be much I can say."
"Don't let it worry you. We'll see to it that interference with your normal life is held to a minimum. I doubt that you'll even miss a day of school." Olivia's smile was half wintry and half motherly. Suddenly it occurred to Scheffler for the first time to wonder how old she was. Her face was unlined, that was all that he could say. He had seen enough of it now to be sure of its attractiveness.
She w
ent on: "The young lady there should wake up normally in an hour or so. We have no business with her. Meanwhile, if you keep your nose clean—is that the proper figure of speech?�you're out of it. In the clear. Home free. Understand?"
"I understand."
"Probably I don't need to tell you to stay out of the timelock from now on."
"No, you don't."
"But I'm telling you anyway, officially. Stay away from that device altogether. Don't even touch the curtain. You can't realize how lucky you were that none of the control settings were changed—what might have happened to you when you used it. What might have happened to a portion of your city here. In a few days, you can go back to where the door of the timelock is now, and that door will be gone�understand? There will be nothing there but the normal wall of this apartment building. But for a few days stay clear entirely."
"I'll stay away from it."
"See that you do. And don't worry about anything else. If you should want to try to call your great-uncle and tell him about this visit of ours, go ahead. But you'll be wasting your time and we'll arrest him anyway. If, as is likely, he never returns here from his current trip to the Middle East, well, feel free to report him missing as soon as you think proper. I don't suppose you'll miss him unduly."
Scheffler said nothing.
"You can even tell people about us if you like. But if you tell anyone I expect they'll think you're crazy."
Scheffler nodded. He had already come to that conclusion.
"Don't worry about anything else. We'll take care of it."
Olivia's smile brightened minimally. The three intruders filed out of his bedroom, taking the statuette with them. A minute later, he thought he heard a door close—somewhere. Becky stirred, and turned over, and mumbled something. But she was still asleep.
When Scheffler went to look, both the front and back doors of the apartment were closed and locked, just as he had left them when he and Becky went to bed.
Pyramids Page 11
