Pyramids

by Fred Saberhagen

  Well, perhaps that was just as well under the circumstances.

  He was dressed and packed now, ready to go or very nearly. He rejoined the two young people in the kitchen, where they were pulling a few choice items out of the freezer to take along.

  It suddenly occurred to Montgomery, looking sidelong at how they worked together, the youthful Nicky and his relative, to wonder if these two were now lovers. Had Willis already been jilted too?

  As they began loading their cargo—two-way radios, outboard motor, dynamite, rifles, a jumble of odd containers—into the time vehicle, young Thomas Scheffler made it clear that he was not yet through being suspicious. "Have you actually been in Egypt?" he demanded of his great-uncle.

  Montgomery Chapel raised a haughty eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

  "I mean twentieth-century Egypt. Within the past few days. That was a Cairo phone number you left for me. But you said you were going to be gone four months."

  "My boy, what difference does any of that make? I went looking for help, information, and I didn't find it. I'll provide you with a complete itinerary of my trip if you want one. But where I was last week is hardly relevant to the problems we are facing now."

  Scheffler still was not satisfied. "And what was that phone call all about? You haven't explained that yet. Sending me in there to look at the false door—that is one of the realest doors I have ever seen in my life. And what was all that crap about how I should make an adjustment on your alarm system?"

  "It was done out of a concern," Montgomery pronounced in a nobly injured tone, "for your welfare. You haven't lived with that device as long as I have." He had spent some time in thinking up that answer, just in case it should be needed.

  The immediate effect was confusion, as Montgomery had hoped. "Let's get on with it," the impatient youth muttered, tightlipped. "Maybe you can show me what you mean when we get into the damned thing."

  Montgomery nodded grimly, and began to survey the food supplies that still remained to be loaded. He had more answers ready if there should be more questions, as seemed likely. More answers to provide more confusion, that was all the young idiot deserved. No, think logically, think accurately. The boy wasn't an idiot. He'd survived both the timelock and an encounter with Pilgrim, in good shape. But good answers were something Montgomery owed to no one.

  For decades he had made plans for his return to ancient Egypt. But now he was having trouble concentrating on the plans he'd made. Many of them had suddenly been rendered irrelevant anyway. Nicky, Nicky, Nicky! She was unchanged, absolutely. Not that her presence matched, quite exactly, the fifty-year-old image in his memory; but he was sure that it was his memory that had devolved. Even her clothing, he thought, was the same in which he'd seen her last, on that never-to-be-forgotten day of half a century ago. The day he'd smiled at her and Willis for what he'd thought would be the last time, and closed himself into the timelock, and done the best he could to take his vengeance.

  Then today, instantly, in the first moment when he saw her standing beside Scheffler, Montgomery had understood immediately what must have happened, even though the possibility of such a twist of fate had never occurred to him before. The shock of recognition, and the fear of her rifle, had made him feint. For a moment, as Montgomery's consciousness faded, he had feared that he was dying without being shot. But he had survived that shock and now he could assume that he was going to live a while. The doctors always told him that he had a strong heart for a man his age.

  But the implications of Nicky's survival were gradually becoming clearer to him now. And they were enough to cause another kind of shock, more subtle and more long-lasting.

  His first and most obvious question had already been answered. Willis had survived too. Only four days for him; why not?

  Next question: Did Nicole and Willis yet realize what he had attempted to do to them? That after watching Pilgrim set the controls a number of times, he'd gambled on being able to close them off from their own world for fifty years? Judging by Nicky's behavior today, it would seem they had never guessed anything of the kind; and for that Montgomery could be thankful.

  For most of his life he'd been assuming that the faithless bitch and her lover were dead, had died within a matter of days after he'd shut down the timelock on them and marooned them in that hellish environment. The stockpile of clean drinking water could not have lasted much longer than that. When a month had passed in Chicago after he'd cut them off he had been certain that his revenge was complete. To Montgomery it had seemed unquestionable that once they were denied the prophylactic powers of the timelock, infection of some kind must have killed them even if the heat and wild beasts had not.

  Even supposing Nicky to somehow have survived the initial dangers, filtering and boiling river water and finding safe food, she must have withered rapidly into old age, her beauty dried and baked and starved away, within a year or two of being marooned in that environment.

  She and her lover, he imagined, could hardly have found each other still appealing after the first days. Montgomery had long relished the mental picture of them as shriveling near-skeletons, clawing the thickening blood out of each other's veins in the last extremity of thirst, fighting feebly over the last drops of clean water in the last canteen.

  But no. The dream, so satisfyingly enjoyed for decades, had been a dream and nothing more. Nothing like it had ever happened. It turned out now that his hideous revenge had been only a glorious daydream. Far from being crushed by the masterstroke of his retaliation, his intended victims had not even realized that they had been found out. In the four days of their isolation they had probably not even tried to use the timelock. For them it had been four days without Monty, four days in which to grapple and pant at will, never dreaming that he had discovered their betrayal.

  That at least was good.

  Because now, his revenge would have to be accomplished all over again.

  Fifty years later, having finished his personal preparations, getting ready to leave through the timelock once more, he exchanged a few more words with Nicky. Her manner toward him was hesitant and odd, but he supposed that under the circumstances it could scarcely be otherwise. Montgomery heard enough from her to convince him completely that neither she nor Willis understood what he had meant to do to them. They had no idea that he'd seen them in the grass at the edge of the marsh, going native together in the heat.

  Nicky said to him, "There was something I was going to tell you."

  "What was it?"

  She hesitated, appearing to struggle with herself. At last she said, "It doesn't matter now."

  Doesn't matter now, hey? Of course not. I am an old man now, and what could such things as love and betrayal matter to the old? What feelings do they have?

  Montgomery asked her for more details about Willis, trying to put the questions with just the appropriate amount of concern. Willis, as he had feared, was in good health.

  By this time they had everything they were going to bring with them loaded into the timelock. It made a great pile, just about leaving room for three people to get in with it. Montgomery did not forget to close both grill and curtain after him. Mrs. White, he was confident, would confine her activities to cleaning, and mind her own business if she noticed anything odd in the apartment. He had trained and rewarded her for decades to that end.

  Montgomery Chapel hadn't been inside the timelock now for fifty years. And it was smaller, more ordinary-looking, somehow, than he had remembered it… entering the little black-walled car again brought memories flooding back, their details sharp and sudden. As if more memories were what he needed now.

  Scheffler, as well as Nicky, appeared to accept the ride as a matter of routine, almost as if the time machine were an auto or a streetcar. How many times had Scheffler ridden it already? But that was probably immaterial now.

  Sitting on one of the remembered black couches, Montgomery closed his eyes against the little, winking lights, gripping the safety belt and letting
his head sag against the wall.

  The sharpest memory of all was only a few hours old. The look on Nicky's face, at that moment when she had recognized him, behind this ruined mask of age that he was forced to wear. That look was one memory, among others, that Montgomery Chapel knew he was going to carry to his grave.

  Was it possible that he still desired her, wanted her, after all that had gone by?

  And now the bitter horror of a new realization was growing in Montgomery Chapel: the horror of the feet that, as matters stood right now, Nicky still had her life ahead of her. And Willis had his too. Decades of youthful vigor for both of them to look forward to—perhaps together.

  Was it too late now for an old man to have the last laugh on them, and Pilgrim too? Perhaps, after all, it was not too late. There might still be a chance for Montgomery Chapel to wipe the youthful arrogance from her lying, treacherous face, and replace it with other things. Beginning, of course, with fear.

  Then, of course, there was the matter of the gold.

  The treasures of the buried Pharaoh, beside which all the wealth that he and Willis had brought back from Egypt in two years shrank to insignificance. For half a century that Pharaonic gold had never been far from Montgomery Chapel's thoughts. He would have to rank it even head of revenge.

  Or would he?

  His own thoughts, now that the time for action was upon him again, were strange to him. To his surprise he could not be sure that revenge was not the most important thing again.

  If it was not so already, it might be when he had seen her once more with Willis. He was going to see the pair of them together again now. That might be enough to tip the balance.

  The point was, of course, to find a way to have both.

  He had expected to have a free hand back there, once the fifty-year interdiction he had imposed upon the timelock was over, and his idiot grandnephew had been allowed to try it out, just in case—no. He had to stop thinking of young Scheffler as an idiot. Underestimating others was certain to lead to trouble.

  … he had dreamt so often of going back to Pharaonic Egypt. There his first joy would be to discover the bones of his faithless lover and his treacherous brother. Perhaps even their whole carcasses, mummified by the exquisite dry heat. Sometimes the dream-search in which Montgomery sought their dessicated bodies was prolonged through whole days of delicious anticipation. In other versions of the dream he came upon their bodies almost as soon as he stepped out of the lock, found them where they had died watching for the door to open, praying in vain for him to temper the justice of his judgment. Wherever they were, the attitudes of their remains would present, somehow, some evidence of the final despair and agony that must have overwhelmed them.

  All dreams, of course. All nonsense. Instead of that, he was now confronted by both the living bitch and the breathing, traitorous brother. The pair of them not only living but triumphantly young, unaware that he had ever tried to strike at them, to make them pay…

  He would have to stop this. It was necessary that he control his thoughts. There was no use in dwelling on the feet that his revenge had foiled. No use at all. He was going to need his brain to deal with urgent problems.

  Their vehicle ceased to move, bringing their passage through spacetime to a soft and easy halt. Scheffler, who had apparently spent the interval lost in thought, was still silent now, though he looked as if he might burst out with more questions at any moment.

  Now, at the journey's end, when the young man pushed the door of the timelock open, Montgomery was eager to step out. Even revenge and treasure could be momentarily forgotten. He was suddenly, youthfully impatient to see it all again. As if returning to this ageless land might, somehow, restore his own youth…

  Sunlight and heat burst in on them when the door slid open. And the smells—how could he ever have forgotten them? And this, the true and changeless Egypt, unlike any other landscape of his youth to which an old man might return, was all unaltered. Naturally. Here in the time of the Pharaohs only four days had passed.

  Scheffler, looking every bit the young adventurer at home in a strange land, stepped out of the timelock boldly, first grabbing up a weighty bag of cargo with one strong hand, carrying his heavy rifle in the other like an experienced hunter. Nicky, hauling somewhat smaller baggage in each hand, followed with her light Winchester slung over her back.

  Montgomery, doing his part, picked up the small pack of his own things and stepped out. As for firearms, he must leave those to others, at least for now.

  Willis, unchanged by fifty years, was on hand and waiting for them, near the mouth of the fissure. Perhaps he had been worried about Nicky, perhaps he had come to help with the baggage they were scheduled to bring back. Pilgrim, of course, would not have told Willis what to expect when he saw his brother again. Pilgrim cared for nothing except his gold.

  "Nicky. I was getting worried," said tall Will, taller than ever now in Montgomery's eyes, and came toward her and appeared about to kiss her, with almost the casual attitude of an old husband. Only at the last moment before he touched her did the presence of his unrecognizable brother strike him. He turned, gesturing. "Where's Monty? Who's this?"

  No one answered Willis immediately. He didn't repeat the question, but rather fell silent. He looked a little apprehensive, as if he might be about to guess the truth.

  Montgomery said: "You ought to know me, Will. If you don't you'll learn to know me again."

  At first even the sound of his voice wasn't enough to make it real to Will. Staring at Montgomery, he blurted: "Good god, you sound like—no. But you look like my grandfather. But that's impossible, he's—"

  Nicky, unwilling to endure this mental fumbling any longer than necessary, had to intervene. "It's Monty. Can't you see?"

  After that Willis said nothing for a long time, but only looked at him. Meanwhile Willis's face went through a whole repertoire of responses.

  At last, even now not really understanding, he said, "Monty? What the hell happened?"

  Montgomery said, "I got old. It will happen to you too, you poor fool. If you live long enough."

  And then Montgomery raised his head, and for the moment forgot even about his brother and the whore. Because Pilgrim was approaching, along the faint path from the direction of the pyramid.

  The slight, dark figure striding jauntily toward them looked much the same as it had fifty years ago, and so did the face, except for the unshaven cheeks�how much time had Pilgrim lived through, subjectively, since their last meeting? And where? Montgomery knew enough by now to realize that he would probably never have the answers to those questions.

  Pilgrim, recognizing him instantly, spread his arms as if in welcome. "Monty! Dear Monty. It's been a long time, hasn't it? I don't suppose you'd believe me if I said you are looking well—never mind. There are matters on which I wish to speak to you. "

  Despite his decades of preparing himself mentally, knowing that this moment would almost certainly arrive one day, Montgomery had to swallow, and for a moment he had difficulty in speaking. Then he said, easily enough he thought, "I'm ready to talk with you anytime. I've held to our bargain."

  "Have you now? It is a relief to hear it. I had supposed it might have been you who maladjusted my machine. Fortunately no serious inconvenience has resulted. I have been concerned lest you be suffering unnecessary pangs of guilt… but that can wait. How goes the hunt for gold?"

  Montgomery looked at Willis. Willis said, "Nothing new in the last four days—Monty."

  Montgomery said to Pilgrim, "Actually, as I suppose Will has told you, we've been putting off looking for your special gold. There were plenty of other things for us to do. From the drift of your conversation before you left, we didn't suppose that you'd be back so quickly—here, in this local time."

  Pilgrim ignored the answer, and began to check over the supplies that had just arrived.

  At first, confronting his brother and then Pilgrim, Montgomery had scarcely noticed the unforgettable heat
of Egypt. But now it assaulted him as of old, demanding that he acknowledge its sovereignty. The sun fell like a weapon on his pith helmet and his khaki-covered back. In his recent years in Chicago he'd been working on plans for a wearable body-cooler, a refrigerated wristband powered by light batteries. But satisfactory technology to perfect the device had been lacking.

  Now everyone had picked up a share of the supplies. Nicky was moving away from him through the sand and the heat, and Monty went trudging after her with only his own light baggage in hand. Heat and weakness assailed him. He knew that he was already tottering, before they had walked halfway to the pyramid. He felt himself suddenly an insane, ridiculous figure. Nicky. He no longer knew whether he still loved or hated the slender body that moved ahead of him, just that he wanted to bring it within his reach. His aged mouth worked, trying to form words.

  Treacherous footing—or something else—betrayed Montgomery and he fell down; he'd been too many years on sidewalks. But no damage done. When someone's youthful hand reached out to help him up again, he forced himself to thank them, smiling cheerfully and convincingly. He struggled on.

  FIFTEEN

  That night when it came time to sleep Scheffler shared one of the temple's stonewalled, unfurnished rooms with Becky. But he quickly discovered that they were not going to share a sleeping bag. There were plenty of unused rooms available in the temple, more even than in Montgomery Chapel's apartment, and after he was rebuffed he offered to go and find a room of his own. But that wasn't satisfactory either; Becky didn't want to be left alone and unprotected, and she insisted it would be his fault if anything happened to her.

  Feeling responsible, he stayed.

  Their cheerless, doorless bedchamber was a high, comparatively cool vault with a floor of granite. Its limestone walls, like those of the rest of the temple, were solid and windowless for the first twelve feet or so above the ground; above that height the walls were mostly open to the air except for pillars, carved into the shape of petals and flowers, supporting more slabs of stone that formed the roof.