Willis and Nicky, before retiring themselves, had kindly assured the newly arrived couple that the really poisonous snakes were not too common here so close to the pyramid. The continuous turmoil of construction, going on for decades, must have driven every kind of bird and beast away from the area, but it was now more than two years since construction had ceased, and the wildlife was coming back. For the last month or so, Willis said, he had been routinely barricading the open doorways of the temple every night with little fires. Some of the Egyptians�whose own huts were largely protected by flimsy screens and magic spells—had voluntarily started taking turns on watch, keeping up the fires.
When Scheffler, having already resigned himself to separate sleeping bags, tried to kiss Becky goodnight, she pushed him away again. "How can you think of that under these conditions?"
He thought he could think of it almost anytime, and he wasn't really sure which of the current conditions turned her off. He couldn't see her face; he had already switched out their small electric lantern, one of several he and Nicky had hauled back here from Chicago. Faint traces of indirect light from someone else's lantern came down the pale stone corridor and in through the open doorway of their room. Meanwhile the massed stars looked in through the broad open windows under the high roof.
Scheffler said: "I don't think anyone's going to intrude on our privacy. If Pilgrim were after your body he'd have made a move by now."
Becky said nothing. She rolled over, turning her back on Scheffler.
"Has he?" Scheffler pursued.
"No." It sounded like a grudging admission.
"As for his crew members in their glassy little helmets, I really doubt they're interested."
But Becky wasn't interested in talking about them either. "Just don't. Not now."
"All right. Good night, then. " He pulled his shoes off and then stretched himself out, clothed, atop his sleeping bag. It was still much too warm to think of getting under any kind of cover.
She didn't answer.
"Becky?"
"What?" She kept her back turned to him.
"I'm sorry I didn't have a chance to get to your apartment and pick up your other clothes and things. When Uncle Monty showed up we thought we'd better head back here right away. " He paused. "And I'm sorry I got you into this."
"I am too."
And that appeared to be that for conversation. At bottom Scheffler really didn't consider himself all that guilty. But he didn't argue. After all, he supposed that some small measure of responsibility for Becky's kidnapping was his.
But minute by minute he was feeling that responsibility less and less.
Insects that had started to seek out the electric lantern's light when it was on had vanished when he turned it off. The night was dark and quiet, but Scheffler stayed awake. The hardness of the stone beneath his sleeping bag was all too evident. He tried first lying on his belly, then on his back. Sleep would not come, whatever position he adopted.
He didn't think it was Becky's anger and rejection that were keeping him awake; he supposed it would have been worse if she had been sweet and not blamed him at all.
But he was too keyed up to sleep. The world around him had a seductiveness, an attractiveness of its own. Ancient Egypt, he kept repeating silently to himself, in mindless incantation. This place, where I am, is really ancient Egypt.
Something howled outside the temple, somewhere not far away. It didn't sound like one of the grubby dogs, of which he had seen several before nightfall. He had the heavy Winchester standing in the nearest corner of the room, if he should need it.
Pilgrim was trusting him with it. That was something to think about. Pilgrim the purported mass murderer.
After a time Scheffler was certain from the sound of Becky's breathing that she slept. He sat up and put on his shoes again, then walked quietly out into the corridor, leaving the rifle where it was. He wasn't especially worried about leaving her alone. She had refused his somewhat tentative offer of a firearm, complaining, as if it too were his fault, that she didn't know how to use guns anyway.
He remembered a stairway nearby here, leading up toward the sky. Enough starlight was coming in from the high openings along the top of the corridor to let him find the stairs and mount them. The stone steps conveyed him through another doorless opening, to the roof. There Scheffler stood on flat slabs of stone, under those mysterious stars, beside the ominous and almost overhanging bulk of the great pyramid. He drew a deep breath of the cooling night and listened to more animal sounds. He was reminded of the presence of the marshes and the river not far away.
Now, with a moment to relax and think, and the black bulk of the pyramid to guide him, Scheffler could be sure that he had his directions straight; he knew where north ought to be. But it was still impossible to find Polaris. Nor was there any constellation he could recognize as the Big Dipper.
How far above the horizon ought the Pole Star to be here? He tried to estimate the latitude of Egypt. He wasn't in the southern hemisphere, surely. No, North Africa wasn't that far south of Europe.
The temple was a sprawling building with a big roof, and Scheffler had been standing on that roof for several minutes before he realized that he was not alone. It was the glow of a cigarette, as someone drew on it, that told him. His eyes were well used to the dark by now, and when he had moved a few steps closer to the other silent person there was enough light in that glow to let him recognize Nicky's face.
She had just been sitting there in silence and darkness. Watching him, evidently. There was no sign of anyone else with her.
"Hello," he said.
"Hello yourself." It came out as a sigh, weary but not unfriendly.
Scheffler looked up at the sky again, and gestured helplessly with both hands. "I don't know what to say about it."
"It'll do that to you. Day or night." Nicky drew on her cigarette again, then offered him one. "Even if they're fifty years old, they're pretty good."
"Thanks anyway. I don't use 'em."
"Oh? I suppose nobody in the Eighties smokes any longer. I hope I'll still be able to drink."
He walked closer to her and sat down, on roof-stone that was still almost hot from the day's sun. "I was looking for Polaris," he announced, gesturing vaguely into the sky.
She turned on her seat, searched momentarily, then pointed with a slender arm, somewhat lower in the northern sky than Scheffler had ever seen Polaris. One star was bright and yellow. "The Pole Star is up there, but it isn't Polaris. It's what we in the early twentieth century would call Alpha Draconis. Precession of the equinoxes, you know."
"Oh. Yeah." Vaguely he remembered something about that.
"And you can't really recognize the Dragon—that's Draco—or the Dipper either. Five thousand years will do that to most constellations, they tell me. But I suppose you know a lot more about astronomy than I do."
It didn't sound as if she really supposed anything of the sort. "I don't know as much as I should," Scheffler admitted.
"Monty and I were both interested at one point." She sighed again. "He taught me most of what I know about it."
"How long have you been here, Nicky? In Egypt, I mean."
"A couple of months, off and on. It seems longer. As soon as Monty and I got engaged he let me in on the secret." She was silent for a few moments. "I thought he was crazy at first. I never imagined anything like this—of course."
"In the nineteen-eighties we'd say 'it blew my mind.' "
They talked. Scheffler didn't want to come right out and ask, but he was wondering what it had been about Monty that had first attracted her. All he could think of was that young Monty must have been someone entirely different from old Monty.
Nicky blew invisible smoke at the stars. "When I saw that old man crumpling to the carpet today…"
"That must have been a rough moment."
"I've had rougher. Never a stranger moment, though, than when I realized who he was… and then realizing that now I might never ha
ve to tell him that it was all off between us. That maybe that problem at least had taken care of itself."
"So, it's been you and Willis for a while?"
The orange spark between her fingers marked out a sharp gesture. "It's never been me and Willis. He's—declared his intentions, as I believe they used to say in the old days. But that's all. I was never interested."
"Oh," said Scheffler, feeling a certain illogical relief. Then he asked: "Do you have any idea what's happened to all the people?"
"The natives? Monty and Will have always told me that most of them must have been driven off when Pilgrim's spaceship arrived. After seeing all the rest of this I could believe he has a spaceship. I got the feeling they weren't really worried about it, so I didn't worry. Why do you ask?"
"I'm getting worried about it. Did Pilgrim ever say anything on the subject?"
Nicole drew on her cigarette. "I never laid eyes on Pilgrim until today, when he showed up with you and Becky. I could tell Will and Monty were afraid of him, the way they talked about him. Now I can see why."
"Is Will sleeping now?"
"Probably. He was snoring when I went past his door. His room's just down the hall from mine. Why?"
"I'd like to have a better talk with him sometime. But let him sleep. What about Monty?"
"He's in another room. I wasn't going to look in on him."
The two of them talked on the high roof, while the stars pivoted slowly on Alpha Draconis. Neither of them noticed a passing ripple among the stars.
"What do you know about Pilgrim?" Nicky asked. "Is he from—some other planet?"
"Maybe. He didn't really say. Some place at least as unlikely as this one, I bet."
When Nicky announced that she was tired, Scheffler walked her back to her room. Sure enough, the heavy masculine snores were coming from another dark doorway down the corridor from the one into which she disappeared. That was good.
Then he went back to the room where he had left his sleeping bag. There was a painting over the lintel that helped him identify the room in the unfamiliar corridor. Just inside the doorway he paused; beyond the high windows the moon had risen, and he could see that Becky was gone. Her sleeping bag and her shoes were still here.
Wait a minute, he cautioned himself, before you start running around in a panic. She's probably just gone to the john. There were latrines, rather like stone outhouses, built into the temple on its eastern side.
Turning back into the darker corridor, he listened. Then he heard the two soft voices at no great distance in the night, and recognized one of them as hers. He couldn't be sure yet about the other, but it certainly didn't sound as if she was in any trouble. None that she was anxious to get out of, anyway.
He suspected that a large part of his guilt, in Becky's eyes, was for not telling her days ago that he had access to all these marvels of gold and treasures. And he suspected he might have been forgiven that omission by now, except that he no longer controlled the access to the gold and marvels.
Scheffler lay down on his own sleeping bag. This time he fell asleep at once.
When he awakened, to morning sunlight falling in through the high windows onto yellow stone, he lay for a time almost peacefully, trying to decide if the carved heads of the columns holding up the roof were supposed to represent papyrus stalks or lotus blossoms, or what exactly. Becky still had not returned, not even to collect her shoes. But he wasn't especially perturbed about her absence. Scheffler lay listening to birdcalls, and marking the progress of the sun across the finely pitted surface of the wall.
Then he heard Becky's voice, somewhere outside. He couldn't distinguish the words, but she sounded cheerful enough. Then Pilgrim's voice, this time loud enough to be easily recognizable, said something. Then she laughed.
On his way back from his morning trip to the latrine, Scheffler stopped in the corridor beside an open window-space that had been made low enough to afford a good view of the outside. It was a spot well-chosen for a window, and he stood there for a minute or two, taking in the morning beauty of the Nile and the lush growth that clung so narrowly along its banks.
Presently he saw Becky again. She was coming around the side of the temple alone, now wearing some spectacular jewelry, as well as her jeans from nineteen-eighties Chicago. Her Chicago sweatshirt was gone, and she had improvised a halter top from a scarf of white linen to take its place. She gave Scheffler a challenging look in passing, and then marched on without speaking.
When Scheffler rejoined the others that morning, in the large temple chamber that served as a common room, he found that Sihathor and the other Egyptians had again risen early. He saw Ptah-hotep and Thothmes coming down an outside stairway from the temple roof. Some of their compatriots were already at work cooking and housekeeping, while others had gone to work their modest fields along the edge of the marsh. Sihathor pointed out the place, and explained that there it was easy to get water to the crops.
Scheffler, watching the surviving Egyptians and speaking to one or two of them, got the impression that they were generally content with their lives.
"Where are the rest of your people, Sihathor?"
"Gone. All gone from the earth." The man sounded resigned, if not unconcerned.
"Whose fault is that?"
"Fault?"
"Has someone done wrong to you? Who did it?"
"I am not a god, only a poor man. It is not for me to say who has done wrong."
And the man went on with what he was doing, taking an inventory of the food supply, making hieroglyphic notes with a ballpoint pen on a small notepad of twentieth-century paper.
Scheffler went out of his way to speak to the next Egyptian he encountered, the tall, unusually good-looking girl who had served breakfast. Her name was Nekhem, and she had a story to tell—how, on the night following Pharaoh's burial, she had suddenly found herself alone in the royal palace. All of the other inhabitants—nobles, courtiers, priests and servants alike—had utterly disappeared. It had taken Nekhem days to discover the small band of survivors living in the vicinity of the pyramid.
"You mean the other people in the Palace went away in boats? Or how?"
"Not boats. Not go away. Just gone."
And Scheffler could find out nothing more from Nekhem than that.
Counting heads, including those of small working figures in the distance, Scheffler confirmed that there were now around twenty-five Egyptians living in the temple vicinity and serving the intruders who were willing to play the role of gods. If that many people had found their way here in two years, how many might still be living in the entire country? It didn't seem likely to Scheffler that there would be more than a few hundred.
Soon he encountered Becky again. By now she had gone further in her adoption of native dress. The semi-transparent linen sheath she had put on looked great, even if it was rather long, but she wouldn't be able to do much work in it.
Becky was not completely unwilling to talk to him when she saw that he was neither enraged nor devastated by her defection. And she was ready to defend their kidnapper, saying what had happened to the natives might not be Pilgrim's fault after all.
Olivia, Scheffler supposed, was most likely to know the truth. He found her sleeping, looking more or less comfortable if pale. At least she gave no sign of being in great pain. Scheffler supposed that her captor probably wouldn't want her to regain her health too rapidly.
Pilgrim, coming in while Scheffler was still there, said: "I have done all that I can for her, until I can summon my ship. And I dare not do that until I have at least some of the gold I need to restore its functions. To get here my ship will use practically all of its stored energy." The cast had now been removed from Pilgrim's arm, and he had discarded his ski jacket and shaved. The arm appeared to be functional, but he still had his gaunt, strained look.
Sihathor and his people, enjoying some of the gods' canned food that they had learned to like, talked now about the aged Monty; when first they recognized him a
s the young man they had known come back, they had interpreted his changed condition as the result of divinity's curse.
"Only riding the Barque of Ra through the Underworld might help him now."
Willis had just been told by Nicky that the world to which he had expected to return was barred to him forever.
He wouldn't take her word for it; maybe the girl had got it wrong somehow. Hurrying to Pilgrim, Will asked questions. The answers were not to his liking. "You're the one who's always saying there's always a way! Now you tell me there's no way for me to get back where I belong!"
"I have made a determination to return to my home. You are free to make a similar determination if you choose."
"You mean it's possible after all? But how will that help me? If you refuse to help?"
Pilgrim was silent.
"You mean that first we have to find your gold. All right. Will you help us to get home then?"
Pilgrim was unperturbed. "I mean nothing but what I have said." And that was all the satisfaction Will could get from him.
It still had not occurred to Will to blame his brother for his and Nicky's fate.
Nicky herself was not that much concerned about blaming anyone. In a way she was already looking forward to the nineteen-eighties, a time she suspected might be as exotic as the one she stood in now.
Later in the morning Pilgrim ordered most of the available people to come with him to the pyramid. They were going to get down to serious work.
SIXTEEN
Approaching the pyramid, Pilgrim sent Sihathor and a crew of Egyptians ahead into the entrance, assigning them to some task inside. Scheffler didn't catch what it was. Monty announced his eagerness to go with them, and Pilgrim raised no objection.
Then, to Scheffler's surprise, the little man led the rest of his workers on a climb up one of the construction ramps.
Pyramids Page 19
