Pyramids

by Fred Saberhagen

  Scheffler let out a puff of breath. "I can't say I'm crazy about him either. I can't figure him out. But now I seem to be working for him, although I've been told that he's a criminal."

  "What he may be in his own world, I don't care," Nicky said firmly. "As long as he doesn't get us into serious trouble in ours." Still she appeared to be mostly absorbed in her own problems. "Do you know why Monty hasn't come through the timelock in the last four or five days?"

  Scheffler hesitated. It was certain, then, that Pilgrim hadn't told her, probably hadn't told Willis either. "Monty doesn't tell me why he does things," he said at last. Jesus, he was thinking. What's going to happen when she gets there?

  She looked down at herself and frowned. "I've spent the last four days working in that hellhole, and I'm ready for a shower. While I'm cleaning up you can begin getting together some of the things on the list. What's the matter, what are you staring at?"

  Scheffler blinked. "Sorry," he said. He had been gaping at her despite his resolve not to do so. She probably thought he was envisioning her in the shower. That would be fun ordinarily, but this time he had been thinking of what was going to hit her in the next few minutes. He ought to warn her somehow, but he couldn't think of what to say.

  He said: "You don't—"

  "I don't what?"

  "Nothing. It can wait." Under her superior stare, Scheffler sighed, and shut up. He was sure Pilgrim was enjoying his little joke.

  The journey this time was a short one, and before Scheffler had thought of any way to phrase a warning they had arrived. Maybe, he thought again, he was mistaken about what was going to happen.

  When the door of the elevator opened, they were looking at the familiar reverse side of the curtain in a darkened Gallery Two. At this point, Scheffler supposed, there was probably no way to tell in which of several decades they had arrived. He stood back, watching as Nicky got out first.

  She had no hesitation in striding out and boldly pushing the curtain aside. But a moment later she had run into the locked grillwork and recoiled in surprise.

  "Monty's had this installed, then," she said, more to herself than to Scheffler. Those startling blue eyes flicked directly at him and away again. "He kept talking about getting something like this put in, but…"

  Darkness filled the apartment, except for the erratic wash of lights that came in around and through the draperies and blinds from distant traffic and from other buildings. Scheffler by this time was at Nicky's side, unlocking the grillwork gate with the key he had carried in his pocket. There was no trouble in reaching around from inside to get at the keyhole. "I think Monty had it installed some time ago," he said, standing back to let her go out first.

  Nicky, if she heard that remark at all, must have decided to ignore it as gross stupidity; the grillwork hadn't been there four days ago. She was already striding past Scheffler, out of Gallery Two and down the hallway. Fifty years ago, he supposed, one of the bedrooms here in this grand bachelor apartment must have been hers, at least unofficially, and he supposed that she was headed for that room now. She hadn't bothered yet to turn on any lights.

  He stayed right on her dusty boot heels all the way down the dim hallway to the kitchen, where she detoured. After four days in ancient Egypt a good cold drink of water evidently took precedence even over a shower, a choice that in the light of his own experience he found understandable.

  Nicky pulled off her pith pelmet and tossed it aside. She strode across the kitchen, which like the rest of the apartment was half-illuminated from outside by the lights of distant vehicles and buildings. Approaching the sink she reached for a glass from the drainboard—then stopped abruptly. Scheffler, behind her, could tell from the angle of her head that she was staring at the sink; the counter, the nineteen-eighties faucets.

  Reaching to the wall beside him, he switched on the kitchen lights. A certain suspicion was beginning to bother him—he kept remembering the way Pilgrim had smiled, seeing the two of them off—and the first thing he was anxious to get a look at was the wall clock. It read six forty-five, a reasonable time for darkness on a winter evening. And then, to allay his suspicions further, he turned to the wall calendar that hung beside the telephone. With relief Scheffler saw that it was the same calendar he remembered�doubtless it had been contributed by Mrs. White, for on its upper leaf, the reverse side of last month's dates, were displayed a religious picture and a message from a South Side funeral home. It was turned to the same month, January, as when Scheffler had seen it last, and—he made sure—the year was the same also.

  But neither clock nor calendar could give him any reassurance about the exact date. The kitchen didn't look as if Mrs. White had cleaned it since his departure, and that helped a little.

  Scheffler thought for a moment, then went to the refrigerator and opened it. The milk and cottage cheese he'd left were still there, the contents of the containers at the same levels as he remembered them. When he opened them and sniffed they still smelled fresh. He might have been gone an entire day, he told himself, relaxing inwardly. Conceivably two days. No more than that.

  Nicky had turned away from the sink, to stare at him while he went through his routine at the refrigerator.

  "What is this?" she demanded, in a suddenly suspicious voice. "Everything here's changed." Her voice dropped off, losing confidence, over the last three words, as if an inkling of the truth had hit her suddenly.

  Scheffler did his best to break it gently. "You've been saying that you left this apartment four days ago. But at this end the time scale has been a little different—"

  Evidently she hadn't yet made up her mind that his replies might be worth listening to; she didn't wait for him to finish this one. "What has he done to this place? All of this—"

  She broke off. Her eyes had become locked on Scheffler's again, and what she saw there, largely pity, must have hit her hard. For the first time since Scheffler had met her she looked vulnerable. She turned away from him, only to be confronted by the nineteen-eighties model freezer and refrigerator, at which she stared in shock.

  Direct action seemed to be called for. No use rumbling around trying to break it gently now. Wordlessly Scheffler moved to the kitchen wall beside the nineteen-eighties phone. He took down the calendar from the wall and held it up in front of Nicky's eyes.

  Nicky looked from Scheffler's face to the page and its terrible numbers, and back to his face again. From deep in her throat there came the kind of small sound that a lost child might have made. Then she backed up until she was stopped by the Formica counter beside the sink. She leaned with her hands against the counter behind her, and stared at Scheffler again. Now her gaze was urgent, pleading, as if there were nowhere else she could turn for help.

  "This is what year it is," said Scheffler softly and patiently. Then he tossed the calendar aside. During the elevator ride and just afterward he had been starting to look forward to this moment, in a way. But now he was not enjoying it at all. "At this end, you've been gone about half a century."

  Nicole was silent for a long time, trying to come to grips with that. He could see her fighting down incipient panic. Then absently she turned back to the sink, and filled her glass. At last she got the long drink of cold water for which she'd hurried to the kitchen. Then she had half a glass more, taking her time about it.

  "Fifty years," she said at last, her back still to Scheffler, and put the glass down hard beside the sink.

  Then she moved toward the window as if she wanted to look out. Scheffler, wanting to be helpful, went to raise the shade, but she waved him back.

  "I see, now," Nicky said, not bothering with trying to see out through the window. "I see now. Let me think for a minute. The settings on the timelock must have been changed the last time Monty used it. When he came back here… four days ago." She looked up at Scheffler sharply. "If the settings could be readjusted again, would that give us, Willis and me, some chance of getting back—?"

  He was standing with arms folded
, leaning back against the kitchen counter, shaking his head gently. "You're asking the wrong man, lady. This timelock thing is all as new to me as it is to you. Maybe even a little newer. But I suspect it's not just as simple as getting into that car and pushing a button or two for where you want to go. The paradoxes and so on that Pilgrim talks about. And I definitely wouldn't try changing any of the settings unless I knew what I was doing. I've figured out that much. Even if Pilgrim hadn't warned us not to do it. Mice in the wainscotting." Scheffler remembered the Monty Python bit with sheep hiding in the walls, but of course Nicky wouldn't. "I wouldn't put it past him," he muttered to himself.

  "No. I wouldn't try it either. That's why Pilgrim was so ready to trust me to come back," Nicole meditated, with bitter anger growing. "He knew that this would happen." Then she looked at Scheffler sharply. "Who are you, really?"

  "Just what I said, a student at the university. Also a somewhat distant relative of Will and Monty. When I was a little kid my mother used to tell me about how you and Will had double-crossed great-uncle Monty and run off together."

  He had thought she might react to that, but evidently she was still numb from the first jolt. "My parents—" she said, and didn't finish.

  "Fifty years," Scheffler reminded her gently.

  "Fifty years." Nicky shook her head as if to clear it, and was silent again. Then her practicality started to return. "Anyway, I assume that even in the nineteen-eighties gold is still gold. If we can keep our deal with Pilgrim going, we can still sell gold. Right?"

  "I think what we ought to shoot for is just getting everyone out of this in one piece. And I don't think Olivia's people will be that easy to get clear of. You haven't seen any of them except her?"

  "No."

  "But she has given her blessing to what we're doing now. And you're right about the gold. Three hundred and something dollars an ounce, the last I heard. If I remember right."

  "And even if Pilgrim does get away with all the gold, there's still a market for Egyptian antiquities, I presume? My God, no one else in this time has opened a timelock to the past, have they?"

  "No. No one in the world I know about. And sure, there's still a market for the ancient stuff too." He hadn't thought he would ever be able to feel sorry for his great-uncle, after the man had used him as a guinea pig and practically arranged to have him kidnapped. But looking at Nicky he came close. He thought he could be sorry for any man who lost her. God, but she was beautiful, even now, grimy and worn out with exhaustion. And right now she was shocked, and desperate, and therefore, Scheffler would be willing to bet, more than a little dangerous.

  Scheffler added: "I'd estimate it's a much bigger market than the one you knew. But you're going to need help, before you just run out and start trying to sell things. Guidance. Until you know this world, someone's going to have to guide you through it."

  "I'm sure," she said, reappraising him, "you will be very helpful." Then she turned away, speaking over her shoulder: "I'm going to find my old room, and take a shower, according to plan—is there anyone else in the apartment?"

  "There shouldn't be. Unless some more of Olivia's police have come in through the window or however they do it. Or Pilgrim and Uncle Monty have more enemies that we don't know about."

  "Olivia. She's police, then?"

  "From Pilgrim's world, wherever that is, and trying to arrest him. She and her friends were here once before. I didn't get the impression that any of them are the kind of people who just give up."

  Nicky's shoulders slumped a little. "Serious crime is something we didn't bargain for when we got into this. Or at least I didn't."

  "Maybe you didn't. Maybe Willis didn't either, for all I know. Monty seems not to have had much trouble making the adjustment."

  "Are you sure Olivia's really some kind of police?"

  "About as sure as I can be of anything in this mess. Why?"

  "But still you say she told you to co-operate with Pilgrim."

  "That's right."

  Nicky heaved an exhausted sigh. "Then why shouldn't we? I doubt if her people are about to pounce on us. We'll get the food and other things and take them back, and worry about the rest of it later."

  She stood for a long moment with her face buried in her hands, as if she hoped to get some rest that way. Then she straightened her neck with a toss of grimy hair. "But there's no tearing hurry. If it's been, my God, fifty years, my own clothes are obviously all gone—is there anyone currently living here whose clothes I could borrow?"

  "Afraid not. If I take time to go over to Becky's apartment… but she's much shorter than you, nothing would fit. There's an automatic washing machine here, and a dryer, if you want to run some laundry. I'll show you how they work. I can also loan you a robe."

  "I don't suppose they'll iron things, will they? Your laundry machines?"

  Presently Nicky had vanished into a bedroom. She was quick and decisive about choosing one, confirming Scheffler's earlier guess about her having had a room here. It was across the hall from Scheffler's. Through the closed door he could hear the water in that private bath start running.

  He went into the bedroom that had become his own, and looked at his face in the mirror there, and wondered who he really was and what he ought to be trying to do next.

  Looking at himself, and taking a cautious sniff or two, he decided that a shower and change of his own might be the best practical way to start.

  Her water was still running when he came out of his room, freshly washed and clothed, and he set about getting some food ready for immediate consumption. If he had understood Pilgrim's final instructions correctly, he and Nicky would be able to stay here for several hours and still be gone no longer than an hour at the other end.

  When Nicky emerged, swathed in a robe and towels, he demonstrated the latest in washer and dryer technology. While the machine was running she joined him at the kitchen table.

  While they shared roast beef sandwiches she began to ask Scheffler questions about the Eighties, starting with what was visible to her at the moment, the food, the containers it came in, modern freezing and microwave thawing. She accepted in an abstracted way the evidences of wealth and plenty in the apartment; probably, he thought, she took that for granted anywhere in the twentieth century, having never known any other land of life except when she went camping. But part of her mind was obviously elsewhere. Doubtless it was back in the ancient land with Willis.

  While Nicky was finishing her milk and sandwiches Scheffler went to the room where the gun rack was and started to look over the possibilities. He was accustomed to shooting a .22, preferably scope-sighted. With that kind of rifle he had once been able to knock the heads off squirrels with fair consistency at a range of up to fifty yards or so. Of course now that lions and crocs were going to be the targets, it was obvious that something bigger in the way of bullets was required. That was no problem here. Whoever had stocked the gun rack seemed to have had his very needs in mind.

  Nicky joined him presently. She was still in her borrowed robe, walking barefoot and chewing on a last morsel of bagel, with her dark hair trying to escape from under a towel. She asked: "What about those funny-looking weapons that Pilgrim and his creatures are carrying? Do you know how they work?"

  "No, but I respect 'em. Whatever they are they're from a different world than the nineteen eighties. And Pilgrim seems to think we're likely to need some of these."

  The rifles in Uncle Monty's fancy wooden cabinet were a far cry from the .22's Scheffler remembered from his teenaged hunting years. These were beautiful and obviously expensive things, with oiled stocks of exotic-looking woods and what looked like hand-tooling on the breeches and barrels. They were well cared for too. But to Scheffler weapons like these were somewhat unfamiliar. At first glance he mistook the first one he picked up for a shotgun—it was a double-barreled piece with a bore diameter of about half an inch, and broke open at the center for loading. Not until Scheffler had broken the action open did he realize tha
t he was holding a rifle. Good God, what did they shoot with a thing like this, elephants?

  While he went rummaging among the firearms, Nicky dug into drawers in the bottom of the gunrack, with the air of someone who already knew what ought to be there. Her slender sunburnt hands came out of a drawer with cartridges. The brassy shapes looked huge to Scheffler, who was used to small game and target shooting. These came packed in small, old wooden boxes that looked like items from an antique shop.

  "Here. Tom." He thought it was the first time that she had used his name. "Weatherby .460, I think that's what you need for the rifle you're holding. If you want something even bigger, there's a Nitro Express. I think that runs .577. Supposed to be able to knock down an elephant. I've never tried it myself. I only weigh a hundred and fifteen, and I've seen how it kicked Will when he fired it. He'd heard that the hippos in Egypt might be dangerous, but so far we've only seen them at a distance."

  "Lions, I suppose?"

  "Haven't seen one myself. But you can hear them, especially at night."

  Whatever the effective range of this ammunition, or the intended targets, there were no scope sights on these rifles. Maybe it wasn't considered sporting to shoot a lion or a crocodile—or an elephant—until the critter charged you. Scheffler could go along with that. Live and let live was fine with him. And anyway there was no guarantee that after forty or fifty years the cartridges were going to fire. Of course his uncle had obtained a fresh supply of dynamite; maybe he'd updated the ammunition too. With a brass cartridge Scheffler found it harder to tell.

  He and Nicky did what they could to scrounge up the other items on the general shopping list. Digging into the hiding place where the dynamite had been concealed fifty years ago, they got out the modern replacement stores that Scheffler had already discovered. There were the blasting caps and electrical detonator, as well as the potent sticks coated in red plastic.

  When a gentle chime from the laundry room announced that Nicky's clothes were dry she took them into her room to dress. Scheffler meanwhile looked into the freezer for frozen meat, and began to gather other supplies. Someone had ordered toilet paper, and he rummaged in several bathrooms to collect enough. There were other items on the list. He began to haul things down the hallway to Gallery Two.