Cheops, the tallest and most important pyramid, the one they would climb, was made of six million tons of stone blocks piled geometrically, without mortar, on twelve acres of land. It rose 451 feet into the morning sky and was believed by many to be a monument to the god Re, its slants reminiscent of sun rays spilling from heaven. The base of this monument could have simultaneously contained Christendom's St. Peter's, St. Paul's, and Westminster Abbey, as well as the cathedrals in Florence and Milan. If Khephren often appeared to be the tallest pyramid, it was only because its architect had cleverly taken advantage of a steeper incline as well as spot on the plateau higher than the Cheops baseline. Mykerinos, the third pyramid was modest only in comparison to its more massive companions.
Around this famous stone trinity were scattered lesser pyramids and burial vaults—mostly the final resting places of influential sycophants who had sought glory while dead in the shadow of the pharaohs’ monuments, just as they had sought glory while living in the radiance of their omnipotent god-kings. Finally, there was the Sphinx, with its man's head and its lion's body; its paws outstretched; its tail, curled along its rocky right haunch, was invisible in the darkness.
The car pulled off the roadway and came to a stop in the centuries-old sand. Only a segment of the closest massive pyramid was visible from one side of the car. The summit of that pyramid, when Gil got out to peer upward, seemed impressively out of reach; it recalled biblical accounts of attempts to build a tower reaching to heaven and made him wonder why this structure, too, hadn't been toppled by a jealous Hebrew God because of similar sacrilege.
"'Soldiers, from the summit of yonder pyramid, forty centuries look down upon you,'” Peter quoted, coming to stand very close behind Gil. Even though Peter wasn't actually touching him, Gil wondered whether the thrill coursing through him was a result of the awe-inspiring monument before them or in response to the superbly handsome man so close behind.
Gil recognized Peter's quote as having been spoken by Napoleon to his troops before the French defeat of the Mamelukes in the 1798 battle fought within sight of the very spot upon which Gil now stood. He said as much, once again finding Peter impressed by hints of Gil's extensive knowledge. This brought home the fact that Peter apparently still labored under the misconception that Gil was someone far less expert on these surroundings than Peter was.
"It says a lot about you that you've taken the time to do your homework about this place,” Peter complimented. His voice was a sensuous caress, and Gil could feel the nearness of Peter's lips as they spoke softly near Gil's ear. “It's surprising how many people come here to see the pyramids and leave without having any real notion of the scope of history represented by them."
Gil turned toward his companion and thought Peter's handsomeness just possibly overpowered even the grandeur of these stone structures. He remembered how it had been the last time they'd stood that close, Peter's arms reaching out to take hold, Peter's hard muscled body pressing against the newly hardened muscles of Gil's body, their lips ... their hard cocks.... “What?” Gil asked, helplessly flustered in sudden realization that Peter expected a response to some recently made, but unheard, question or comment.
Peter smiled, as if to say he knew where Gil's mind had been wandering, had read Gil's innermost thoughts and was well satisfied at the confirmation that Gil found Peter so tremendously attractive. “Are you ready?” Peter asked, reaching out a hand as though he might touch it to Gil's cheek.
"Sure,” Gil confirmed, turning before Peter's fingertips could make contact. If Gil was ready to climb the Pyramid of Cheops, and he was, that didn't mean he was ready, at least quite yet, for any continuation of what he'd interrupted the night before.
Their guide was already up the first tier of stone blocks. He offered his hand, and Gil took hold of it, for a moment wishing Peter's fingers were the ones closing over his. Mohammed moved on, and Gil followed. Sometimes Gil traversed the face of the wall, more often than not taking giant leg-tiring steps that led him steadily upward. When he stopped, so breathless he was quite sure he was too exhausted to go on, a glance downward showed him a car that had shrunk to the size of an ant. A look upward, however, only revealed at least as much distance to go as he had already covered.
"Tired?” Peter asked, leaning against the rock beside him.
"How about I wait here?” Gil suggested. How right he had been earlier when he had suspected that it would be a trial to gain access to the view afforded from the summit—despite the romance of that view! There was nothing even vaguely romantic about dying of exhaustion at the halfway point.
"You'll feel better after you rest a few minutes,” Peter assured, although Gil didn't believe a word of it. Gil was fighting down waves of nausea, nearly sick from exertion. It was the very same sense of queasiness he'd experienced in the gym when he'd first initiated his recent let's-get-this-chubby-body-of-mine-into-shape project and had initially embarked upon a work-out routine that was too rigorous. “I'll tell Mohammed to move a little slower,” Peter said. Maybe he didn't intend for his comment to embarrass Gil into attempting to match the pace of their guide—a man twice their age—but, even if he did ... What finally did prod Gil onward and upward was Peter's gentle follow-up reminder that they wouldn't find it any easier should they decide to come back another day. “We're not getting any younger, are we?” Peter included himself in his time-marches-on comment.
Gil was still breathless, but he gathered a reserve from somewhere and pushed away from the stone on which he'd collapsed. He accepted the hand Mohammed was, once again, lending in assistance.
"We're almost there,” the guide promised, a seemingly long-time later. But considering that it wasn't the first time he'd said it, the comment provided Gil very little by way of actual encouragement.
"I must have been crazy to let myself be roped into this,” Gil said, stopping again. His words didn't come out in a fluid sentence but were punctuated by the rasps of a man who sounded as if he were gasping out his last. After a moment to regain his breath, he redoubled his efforts at climbing and, with a final exhausted step, finally reached the summit.
He didn't make any immediate attempts to admire the view, even if that view was a decidedly exceptional one. He moved instead to the center of an area that had resulted from the removal of the original capstone or, more doubtfully, from there never having been one in the first place. He collapsed to a sitting position and put his head on drawn-up knees, wrapping his arms securely around his legs.
"Tell me it wasn't worth it,” Peter challenged eventually. “Go on, I dare you."
Gil couldn't deny that being at the top was worth the arduous trek to get there, especially since he was surprisingly revived by the few minutes Peter had diplomatically given him to catch his breath. In the dim light of predawn, the view down along the four giant stairways that converged at the narrow platform on the top was breathtaking. The desert on two sides, the green of farmland on another, and the city and the Nile off to the east all combined into a collage of expansive grandeur. But it was the view of the ruins close by that was of most interest to Gil as an archaeologist. There was nothing like his present vantage point to give a proper perspective to a necropolis whose state of decay often made its layout seem lacking in organization as seen from ground level. From where he sat, distance blurred many imperfections, much as individual brush stokes merged in a painting viewed from across the room. Along a line leading north was the sirdab, or offering chamber, the mortuary temple and satellite pyramids, the courtiers’ mastabas and the causeway leading to the Valley Temple. All were visible with a clarity missed by anyone who didn't put out the effort (and the bribes) to make the climb.
Gil came to his feet. His legs remained a little weak in the knees, but he felt that that was small enough payment for the opportunity to stand beside Peter and face east to witness the first real blush of dawn on the far horizon.
He was momentarily distracted by the sudden realization that their guide was now
here in sight. “Mohammed is within calling distance, I assure you,” Peter said, having divined Gil's concern.
Cairo was still a black silhouette shrouded in a dusty veil. The desert beyond the city, above which the sun hadn't yet lifted, was shadowy gray. The sky in the distance was becoming a flux of changing colors more subtle than sunset hues but no less beautiful. Above Cheops, the heavens were still sloughing ebony; the most brilliant stars, still flickering faintly, were soon destined to drown in that flood of more intense illumination that was, even then, come rushing to claim them.
"Oh!” Gil said in response to the sun's peeking over the horizon. It was a mere sliver of orange growing as he watched, adding brilliance to the dawning sky that glowed to pale pink and yellow. Lace-like scatterings of clouds became stained with bleeding colors, and then expanded into a collage of even more varying shades.
"'Oh, Re, who smileth, joyfully—'” Peter quoted. “'—and whose heart delights in the perfect order of this day Thou enterest by coming forth into Heaven from the east; the Ancients and those who have gone before salute Thee!’”
Gil didn't know the source, thinking—correctly—that it must have come from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. No matter. The sun chose that particular moment, as if conjured by Peter's centuries-old incantation, to make its full appearance on the horizon, doing so in a blinding flash of light that caused gray desert to turn gold, black sky to turn blue, and Cairo to burst forth, like a glittering diadem, on the landscape.
Peter's eyes were golden suns with profound, almost brown, centers. He moved closer to Gil and said:
"'My well-being is his entrance from outside:
For when I see him, I am well.
If he opens his eyes, I find my youth again;
If he speaks, I gain my strength again;
When I embrace him, he casts out devils from me.... ‘"
It was a variation on a love poem from the Egyptian New Kingdom, punctuated with a gentle touching of Peter's lips to Gil's ear. What followed thereafter was a lips-on-lips kiss that made Gil's mouth open slightly beneath subtly applied pressure. Peter tasted of mint and of something even more delicious, making Gil helplessly want more of the same, as if he were a starving beggar turned loose upon a rich man's banquet.
Quite besotted by the man and the moment, Gil ran his hands down Peter's back, feeling contoured hardness beneath a knit pullover. He wanted the warmth of Peter's naked skin against his fingertips, and he quickly discovered that was possible by merely running both of his hands upward under Peter's shirt. His fingers trailed around rib cage to discover, like a blind man reading Braille, well-defined chest rippled with steel-like muscle.
"Gil, Gil,” Peter whispered response and fumbled with the buttons on Gil's shirt, peeling back material to put callus-hardened hands against Gil's bare chest.
There were, however, limits beyond which Gil was still unprepared to go. It didn't matter that, at that moment, not only Peter but all the forces of nature seemed determined to unite them; Gil still had enough sense to resist seduction and the likely fall out of mixing pleasure with business. True, he was allowing Peter certain liberties ... true Gil was taking certain liberties ... but those were possible because Gil intuitively realized the built-in protection offered by the time, the place, and Mohammed waiting close by to lead them down from such rarefied heights. If Gil had momentarily, again, succumbed to temptation, it had been to prove he could handle more than a kiss without losing his head. He had proven what he wanted to prove, and he well knew the danger inherent in proceeding any further. He was, after all, only human, and he certainly couldn't have come to this point if he hadn't felt some kind of attraction for the man pressed so sexily against him. Gil certainly didn't distribute kisses to all comers, even when he'd been his most promiscuous. He couldn't remember the last time he had even felt an urge to touch any man the way he had touched and still wanted to touch Peter ... and wanted to be touched by Peter. “Listen to me, Peter,” he said; Peter's mouth nestled in the warmth of Gil's neck and was doing maddening things there. “We have to get down from here before the buses begin dropping off the regular tourists."
"I want to make love with you ... right here,” Peter insisted, his lips sensuous butterflies against sensitive flesh. His blood-bloated cock, little concealed by the material of his pants crotch, did sensuous battle with Gil's own obviously hard dick.
Gil thanked God when Mohammed suddenly reappeared.. Peter, though, didn't welcome the intrusion; he released Gil suddenly and turned to the guide, requesting him to disappear for a few more minutes. Gil was embarrassed at the disorganized state of his clothing and quickly pulled his shirt closed, clumsily refastening its buttons.
Peter had spoken in Arabic. Mohammed responded in kind—something about there possibly being problems if they weren't down on schedule. “There will be no problems,” Peter insisted. “I'll see to it."
"That won't be necessary,” Gil interjected, his command of the Arab tongue bringing surprised glances from both men who obviously assumed they'd been speaking in some kind of Gil-doesn't-get-it code. “We'll go down now,” Gil said. Arabic, like any other language, held secrets only from those who hadn't taken the time to master it. Gil couldn't help smiling, though, at Peter's continued amazement. “There are some excellent language courses taught in the States, you know,” Gil informed, wondering if Peter thought that the only place outside the Arab world in which one might learn Arabic was within the august halls of Oxford.
"You must admit, it's not a language one would normally expect to hear from your average American tourist on holiday,” Peter replied, persisting in his mistaken notion that Gil was a common tourist.
"No matter, we're going down,” Gil said, his shirt finally buttoned, even if the presence of an extra button indicated he hadn't done a very good job of it. “There's no sense in running the risk of getting any of us into trouble."
"It's surprising how much trouble can usually be dissolved by the presentation of a few Egyptian pounds,” Peter said, revealing what Gil had long ago discovered all by himself.
"Nevertheless,” Gil said, “as unique as the experience might be, my having sex with you, here, atop this pyramid, in exotic Egypt, I told you last night that my days of casual sex were over and done with. That resolution hasn't changed.” Or, had it?
"Well, maybe, just maybe, it could be more than casual sex if we'd both agree to let it be. What would you think of that?"
"Come on now, Peter, please don't try to flatter me with some kind of cockamamie line about love a first sight,” Gil pooh-poohed, giving a look that said Gil wouldn't be buying that even if Peter tried his very best to sell it. At the same time, a certain something inside of Gil made him wish it could be bought and believed.
"How the hell do we know what we can both feel?” Peter protested; a question that surprised Gil. “We haven't had much of a chance for courtship. One day, we meet; two days later you're off up the Nile. It's a bit much to expect me to define my feelings, beyond a desire to suck and fuck you, not to mention vice versa, under these circumstances, don't you think? I assure you that I would have at least attempted a more lengthy courtship if I'd thought for one moment you'd be around a little longer than forty-eight hours."
"Did you bother to ask me whether or not I might consider staying on a little while longer in Cairo?” Gil asked.
Peter gave a look that said just how much credence he put in any suggestion that Gil might have changed travel plans to coincide with the arrival on the scene of a potential suitor. “Tell me, Gil, would you have considered staying on for a few more days?” he asked. His sarcasm made it obvious he already knew the answer.
"Not in Cairo,” Gil said, intending to give him, at long last, the information he thought would stun Peter for sure. Gil couldn't imagine what Mohammed must have thought of all that was going on. Judging by the way the guide kept nervously glancing at his expensive wristwatch, Gil could see he was little interested in much of anything excep
t a schedule that was decidedly not being met. “But how about my giving you two whole months in Hierakonpolis?” Gil asked Peter with a smile. The look Peter provided at that moment was well worth all the harmless subterfuge Gil had used up until then. Peter genuinely looked as if he had received one of the biggest, if not the biggest, surprise of his life. “Maybe it would help if we went through introductions, once again,” Gil said, thoroughly enjoying himself and wanting to extend the moment a bit longer. Not even the sweeping magnificence of the view could draw his attention away from Peter's handsome face at that moment. “My name is Gil Goldsands. G. Goldsands. And I believe we're presently assigned to the same archaeological dig, are we not?"
"You're G. Goldsands?” Peter asked, as if that notion was so far removed from possibility that he simply couldn't grasp it. “No way! G. Goldsands is a pudgy little nerd with slicked-back hair and glasses."
"Surprising, isn't it, what a little time spent in a gym, and with a hairstylist, and a bit of corrective eye surgery can do, these days? More magic than performed by Cinderella's fairy godmother, I would imagine, complete with magic wand."
"I don't believe it. You're sure you're that G. Goldsands?"
"Well, you'll certainly have proof positive in a few days’ time, won't you?” Gil said, flashing a smile. “That is when we're officially scheduled to rendezvous, isn't it?"
"Why the hell didn't you tell me earlier?” Peter asked. Perhaps, it had finally dawned on him as to why Gil was so up on all things Egyptian.
"Frankly, I didn't want to ruin something I was admittedly beginning to find enjoyable,” Gil said, at least willing to give Peter that much.
"Ruin it how?” Peter inquired. Gil wasn't about to start bad-mouthing Peter's grandfather. It was doubtful Peter would find the reference anything but water under the bridge; hell, even Gil was, more often than not, these days, thinking it was silly.
"Call it the fear of conjuring whatever the disaster always predicted of anyone mixing pleasure with business,” Gil said. There certainly had been more than a few pleasurable moments shared between them. “I suppose I had visions of our conversations suddenly degenerating into shoptalk about whether or not Crete really is all that's left of Atlantis."
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