by Mike Resnick
“It’s not that simple. Right now they think you’ve got it—but once they know you don’t, they’ll decide that you gave it to me sometime in the past forty-eight hours—or perhaps even that I found it when I was rescuing you from the tomb.” He grimaced. “In truth, I’m probably not a hell of a lot safer than you are.”
“Then why did you go out of your way to convince me you were?” demanded Lara.
He spent a little too long trying to formulate an answer.
“Get it through your head that I’m not a frail flower,” she said, trying to hide her annoyance. “If you withhold any information from me, it just makes it that much harder to solve the problem—and this problem’s hard enough without some additional if well-meaning sexism.”
“You’re right,” he admitted. “It won’t happen again.”
“See to it,” said Lara. “It’s not enough that we merely search for the Amulet. We’re actually in a race; we’ve got to find it before they find us. Or, as the old pulp magazines would say, we’re in a race against death.”
“Maybe not,” said Mason. “As long as we’re running from them in Egypt, they’re going to assume one of us has the Amulet. But once we show up in the Sudan, rather than going to England, they’ll know we’re still looking for it.”
“Why?” asked Lara. “Maybe they’ll think I found it and plan to rule the Sudan as the new Mahdi.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” said Kevin. “You have to be a true believer to be the Expected One, and you and I are both infidels. They know neither of us can become the Mahdi, and that means they know neither of us will be invulnerable even if we’ve got possession of the Amulet. That being the case, we’d have to be idiots to go to the Mahdist’s stronghold if we had the Amulet. No, the only reason for us to go to the Sudan is because we don’t have it. Because we are still searching for it. That’s the truth, and more important, the Mahdists will accept it as the truth.” He paused. “Oh, a few of them may think our going to Khartoum is a ruse and keep trying to kill us, but I think most of them will be content to watch us and let us find the Amulet for them.”
“How will they know we’ve found it . . . assuming we do?”
He shrugged. “I’m sure they have their methods.”
“They think I’ve got it now, and I don’t, so they must not have very reliable methods.”
He shrugged again.
“And what do we do with it if we do find it?” Lara continued. “If everyone knows why we’re there, the government won’t want us to take it out of the country, and I don’t know that I trust any government enough to hand that kind of power over to them, even if there’s no magic to it at all, but only the power of fanatical belief.”
“I haven’t thought that far ahead,” admitted Mason. “I suppose we’ll try to hunt up a truly worthy man, and give it to him.”
“There you go again,” said Lara. “Aren’t there any truly worthy women in the world?”
“Point taken,” he said sheepishly.
“And what if—assuming it’s a man, after all—he’s a Lincoln rather than a Sadat?”
“I don’t follow you.”
“What if the best person we can find, the one truly worthy person, is an unbeliever, an infidel?”
“Then he or she won’t be invulnerable or immortal,” answered Mason. “But they’ll still possess a source of enormous power. Unlike pulp magazine heroes, they won’t have the power to cloud men’s minds, but they’ll certainly have the power to influence them for good.”
“I don’t know,” she said dubiously.
“What’s the problem?”
“If absolute power corrupts absolutely, then almost-absolute power corrupts almost absolutely.”
“Let’s assume whoever we find will be able to resist the corruption.”
“Gordon was a devout man, and he knew better,” Lara pointed out. “How do you destroy the thing, anyway?”
“Destroy the Amulet of Mareish?” he repeated, shocked at the thought. “I’ve spent half my life looking for it!”
“If it’s half what you say it is, it’d be better if no one ever found it—but since I don’t seem to be able to walk away without getting shot at anyway, I’d like to know how to rid the world of it once I find it.”
“I won’t even consider it,” said Mason. “We’ll simply give it to the best person we can find.”
“What if we can’t find someone we trust?”
“That’s a very cynical thing to suggest,” remarked Mason. “Surely you’ve met trustworthy people before.”
“Not many.”
“Then we’ll keep it under lock and key until the day we can find one.”
“I’ve spent my whole life taking things that were under lock and key—and worse,” said Lara.
“Let’s worry about that when we come to it,” said Mason. “The main thing is that by the mere act of openly searching for the Amulet in the Sudan, we’ll put an end to most of these crazed attacks. Besides,” he added, “as an archaeologist, I think it’s the most exciting challenge of my career.” He stared at her for a moment. “Do we have a deal?”
“I think you’re risking your life rather foolishly,” she said. “But if you want to come to the Sudan, I can’t stop you.”
“Then we’re partners,” said Mason.
8
“There it is!” said Mason as the Amenhotep finally appeared out of the darkness. He stood up in the stern of the motorboat and waved his arms.
“I’ve been thinking,” said Lara. “Why should they stop for us? After all, you’ve already paid the captain for our passage all the way to the Sudan.”
“I paid him half,” replied Mason. “He gets the other half when we reach our destination.” He shot her a disarming smile. “I may not know hugger-mugger, but I know how to bargain in the Third World!”
The Amenhotep slowed down as it approached them, and the captain leaned over the side.
“I thought you were still on the boat,” he said.
“My wife was waiting for me at Aswan,” lied Mason smoothly. “I decided it was best to avoid her.”
The captain uttered a knowing chuckle. “Just a moment, and we’ll lower a rope ladder for you.” A crew member came up and whispered something to him, and he leaned over the side again. “I have just been informed that one of our lifeboats is missing. Would you happen to know anything about it?”
“You don’t need it,” said Lara. “Ever since they built the High Dam, the Nile’s only five or six feet deep in most places. If your ship springs a leak or capsizes, the passengers can walk to shore.”
“That isn’t the point,” said the captain. “It is ours, and we want it back.”
“I don’t have it any longer,” said Mason. “How would you like to have this boat as a replacement?”
The captain’s eyes narrowed greedily as he computed how much he could sell it for. “Is the motor included?”
“Certainly,” said Mason. “What would I do with a motor and no boat?”
“It’s a deal,” said the captain. He turned to the crewman. “Lower the ladder.”
A minute later Lara and Mason were on deck, and a minute after that the Amenhotep was once again heading upstream, towing the motorboat behind it.
“Four o’clock,” announced Mason, looking at his watch when the two of them were alone again. “It’s been a long night. I think I’m going to bed.”
“I slept before we went to Elephantine Island,” replied Lara. “I’m going to stay on deck for an hour or two. I hate that little cabin. It smells bad and makes me feel claustrophobic.”
“Claustrophobic?” queried Mason in disbelief. “Lara Croft, who’s wiggled her way into places even smaller . . . and smellier, for that matter?”
Lara grimaced. “The last place I wiggled my way into, as you put it, collapsed on top of me and nearly killed me. I guess I haven’t gotten over it yet.”
“Give yourself some time,” said Mason, walking off. “It’s
only been a few days. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Lara walked to the area at the stern that housed the three wooden chairs. She pulled one of them to within a foot of the railing, and adjusted another just in front of it. Finally she sat down, leaned back until the chair was balancing against the railing on two of its four legs, and used the other chair as a footstool.
The clouds had vanished, and she stared up at the stars, trying to assimilate everything that she’d undergone since being trapped in the tomb. Most of it still seemed like a dream to her: the unleashing of the evil deity Set, his efforts to plunge the world into total darkness, the battle, even her eventual triumph. The only thing that seemed truly real to her was being trapped, barely able to breathe or move, in the rubble of the tomb.
Finally, refusing to let the memory of her ordeal master her, she began making plans. The logical place to start looking for the Amulet was Khartoum. It had been Gordon’s home for the last year of his life. If he or one of his men actually stole the Amulet from the Mahdi, it made sense that it was brought back to Khartoum. After all, that was the only city under Gordon’s control, the only place that was safe, even temporarily, from the Mahdi’s forces.
But most of the Mahdi’s men were Sudanese. Why hadn’t they just walked in, posing as citizens of Khartoum, and kept an eye on him once they knew the Amulet was gone—and they had to know it after Gordon defeated the Mahdi at Omdurman.
You’re not thinking clearly, Lara, she told herself. Gordon or his men stole it before Omdurman or he wouldn’t have defeated the Mahdi there, and it made sense that possibly excepting the Mahdi, no one knew it until the battle was over. So that was why they couldn’t watch to see where he hid it.
Still, someone had to know where it was. Surely Gordon knew. Perhaps Stewart, too, or one of the locals, maybe more than one. Why didn’t the Mahdi just send his spies into Khartoum and try to find out where it was?
And then she remembered all the books she had read about Gordon, in school and on her own. The Mahdi couldn’t send anyone into Khartoum, not so much as a single spy. Khartoum lay at the juncture of the White and Blue Niles, and Gordon had flooded a channel around the city, literally turning Khartoum into an island. That was how he’d held off a far superior army for months. The city only fell when the water level dropped during the dry season and the Mahdi’s army could finally march and ride across it.
Brilliant man, that Gordon, she concluded. Who else would have thought of flooding the plains around the city? It didn’t help in the long run—a British relief column, fully capable of standing up to the Mahdi’s forces, arrived days after the city had fallen and Gordon was dead—but still, she had to admire his creativity.
And that, of course, made her task all the more difficult. To find an artifact that was hidden more than a century ago in a relatively primitive country was hard enough—but to find one that had been hidden by a man of Gordon’s intellect . . . that was going to take hard work and intensive study. She’d have to read everything the man had written, everything that had ever been written about him, until she knew exactly how his mind worked. And even then, she’d need more than work and study—she’d need luck. Lots of it.
“It is time that we spoke, Lara Croft.”
Surprised, Lara righted her chair and stood up. She found herself in the company of the two burly Arabs who had been friendly to her in the restaurant. They didn’t look so friendly now. In fact, one of them, the smaller of the two, was pointing a Luger straight at her. The other held a dagger.
More Mahdists, she thought. Her hand snaked down toward a pistol.
“I do not wish to shoot you,” the man with the Luger said. “Raise your hands slowly.”
She complied. “Who are you?”
“My name is Hassam,” he said. “And this is Gaafar.”
Gaafar stared at her intently. “Have you found it?”
“Have I found what?” she asked innocently.
“Please don’t pretend to be stupid,” said Gaafar, whose English was somewhat better than Hassam’s. “It is unbecoming. Did you find the Amulet?”
“No.”
“Truly?”
“Truly,” said Lara. “So you see, there’s no reason for you to kill me.”
Both men looked at her as if she were crazy.
“Do you know who we are?” asked Gaafar.
“I know from your accents that you’re Sudanese,” she said. “I assumed you were Mahdists, but now . . .”
“We are Sudanese,” affirmed Gaafar. “And we don’t want the Sudan, and eventually the world, to be awash in blood. We oppose the Mahdists.”
“I don’t understand,” said Lara. “Didn’t you just ask me about the Amulet?”
“Yes.”
“Then you do want to find it.”
“Only to destroy it,” answered Gaafar. “The world can never have another Mahdi! The next one might be even worse!”
She stared at them, trying to decide if they were telling the truth.
“If you want the Amulet destroyed,” she said at last, “you’re the first.”
“There are more of us,” Gaafar assured her. “Ever since we have been aware that Colonel Stewart visited the temple at Edfu, it has been our duty to keep watch over it. It had been fully explored and measured and charted over the years, so we knew that if someone of your reputation went there, it was almost certainly to find the Amulet of Mareish.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, but that’s not why I was there. I didn’t even know it existed, and I never saw anything resembling an amulet.”
Gaafar stared at her for an uncomfortably long moment. “I believe you,” he said at last.
It was Hassam’s turn to stare at her. Finally he said, “Dare we ask her?”
Gaafar seemed to consider the question, and then nodded his assent. “We might as well,” he said. “We need her help every bit as much as she needs our protection.”
“What are you talking about?” she said.
“Lara Croft,” began Hassam formally, “you have a history of finding that which everyone says cannot be found. Will you help us find the Amulet of Mareish?”
“You’re joking, right?”
The two men glanced at each other, puzzled.
Lara gestured. “You’re asking me to help you . . . at gunpoint?”
Puzzlement changed to embarrassment. “A thousand pardons, Lara Croft!” cried Gaafar.
Hassam, meanwhile, handed the Luger to her butt first. “Here, take it.”
She did. And pointed it at Gaafar. “That knife of yours is still making me nervous.”
Gaafar slid the offending blade back into his robes. “Now we stand before you empty-handed,” he said. “We ask you humbly: Will you help us find the Amulet and destroy it?”
“Why should I trust you?”
“You hold our lives in your hand. We have given you this power. Does this not prove our sincerity?”
Lara considered for a moment. Whatever they were up to, killing her wasn’t a part of it, or she’d be dead already. She decided to play along for now. If they were trustworthy, fine. If not, she’d make them wish they had killed her. She returned the Luger to Hassam, again butt first. “All right, I’ll help you find it,” she said. “But I can’t promise to destroy it.”
“But you must!” said Hassam. “Its power is too great, too dangerous. . . .”
“You’ll just have to trust me to do the right thing when the time comes. I trusted you, didn’t I?”
The two men looked at each other, then back at Lara, and nodded.
“Good,” she said. “Let me go wake up my friend. He’ll want to help as well.”
“No,” said Gaafar. “We know of Lara Croft’s reputation. We know nothing of your friend.” He paused. “You are in danger as long as you remain on the Amenhotep. Too many people know you are here. Soon we will leave the boat and be met by our confederates. You will come with us, and we will travel across the desert to Khartoum. Your friend
will stay here on the boat.”
“You’re making a big mistake,” said Lara. “My friend is Kevin Mason Junior, the son of an archaeologist who is more famous than I’ll ever be. He’s not only followed his father’s footsteps, but he can probably draw upon his father’s knowledge and wisdom.”
“No!” repeated Gaafar harshly. “There will be many hardships and dangers ahead. You may be up to them; we don’t know that he will be.”
“He saved my life and has shared all the dangers with me,” protested Lara adamantly. “He is my friend. How can I leave him behind?”
“If you care for him at all, let him remain on the Amenhotep. Surely you agree that he will be in far less danger if he is not at your side. You can meet him once we reach Khartoum, where we can provide better security.”
“All right,” she said. “I’ll go with you, but I must at least be allowed to leave a note telling Kevin that I left willingly, that I haven’t been abducted, and letting him know where I’ll meet him in Khartoum.”
“That is acceptable.”
“When do we leave?” she asked.
Gaafar briefly studied the shore. “In another ten miles,” he said. “Hopefully it will be before sunrise.”
“We must leave the boat before it reaches the Temple of Abu Simbel,” added Hassam. “We have information that a group of Mahdists have gathered there. They will of course assume that you are aboard the Amenhotep.”
“All right,” said Lara. “I’ll go write that note to Kevin now.” She paused thoughtfully. “I’ll tell him to meet me at the Khartoum Hilton.”
Gaafar shook his head. “No. That is the first place they will be watching.”
“The only other hotel I know is the Aeropole,” suggested Lara. “How about that?”
“Our leader says no,” said Gaafar. “There are too many English there. When you do not show up at the Hilton, the Mahdists will look at the Aeropole next.”
“Okay, I give up,” said Lara. “You choose one.”
“I will ask our leader,” said Gaafar.
“He’s aboard the Amenhotep?”
