“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” the Lion said, his voice edging with anger.
“You’ve spoken against me to the king’s guards,” the Captain repeated. He, the Archaeologist, and the Lion were in the Captain’s work tent. He had never bothered to upgrade the tent to a more permanent structure, for the camp was not where his primary interest lay. The Lion and his father were standing; the Archaeologist was sitting in a chair behind the Captain’s desk, watching their faces. “If things hadn’t gone the way they did, I might be dead now.”
“Believe me, Father, I say as little about you as I can.”
“I’m not interested in having that argument now,” the Captain said, goaded by his son’s tone and its intimations of disapproval.
Ignoring this comment, the Lion pressed on. “What do you expect? You are making love to the queen! That will hardly promote domestic tranquility.”
“Actually,” the Archaeologist said softly, “I believe the king now approves.”
“How proud you must be!” the Lion said, turning on his mother. “Now your husband has everyone’s permission to carry out this affair.”
“The agreements between your mother and me are our own concern.”
The Lion turned again to his father. He saw a man with features very similar to his own; they shared the same hair, the same skin, and faces that were as alike as brothers, excluding the difference in their ages. But the Lion could find little else they had in common anymore.
“I know my mother has taken to sleeping with her guards,” he said, somewhat more calmly. He was resigned to these facts, though they didn’t please him. “I could understand if you two were no longer happy with each other, but that doesn’t seem to be the root of it. You’re becoming strangers to me.”
“This place is different,” his mother said quietly. “We’ve agreed to live by different rules.”
“I suppose that is your right,” her son said after a pause. He was tired of this conversation. His parents now spoke a language that did not ring true to him, and he saw no reason to continue arguing. “You accused me of speaking against you to the guards, Father. I’m telling you I did not. My wager is that the Mechanic was the source of that information.”
He looked at his father, but the Captain’s face betrayed nothing. “At any rate,” the Lion continued, “you shouldn’t believe everything you hear. I know I don’t. If I did, I might not speak to you at all.”
With that, he strode out of the tent and into the afternoon sun, leaving his parents behind.
A little way off was his new wife, Ipwet, sitting with the Doctor and tending to several of the local children. The Lion pushed his parents from his mind and admired his wife as he walked over to her. She was a native girl, several years his junior, with dark, perfect skin and a smile that made him weak.
“What’s the matter?” she asked as he arrived at the table. His face held residual anger.
“It’s not important,” the Lion said, giving her a hug and burying his face in her neck.
“Are you sure?” Ipwet asked. “Something with your parents?”
“No, no, my heart,” the Lion insisted, “it’s not important.”
“It was a near thing,” the Captain said, sinking into a chair next to his wife. “But, as it turned out, a watershed moment.”
“You seem to have navigated it quite well,” the Archaeologist replied. Her tone was devoid of emotion.
The Captain studied her. “It hurts you when I’m with her.”
She leaned back in her chair and looked up at the tent ceiling. Her blond hair, graying somewhat now, was pulled back from her face into a braided bun. “No,” she said slowly, “not anymore. You’ve at least been good enough to inform me of your intentions, and I’ve taken…comfort as well.”
“Yes, so I’ve heard.” He smiled at her in a somewhat prurient fashion, but she did not return the smile or even look at him.
“And I think there will be other consolations for me.”
The Captain grew serious then and turned toward her. “There will be many consolations. For both of us. As long as we are in agreement.”
She looked at him. “In agreement how?”
“The king named me as Osiris. The deed is done. In his eyes I have become the god incarnate.”
“Congratulations.”
“Now I must live up to it. We must live up to it.”
She said nothing for a moment, thinking of what this might mean. Then, “Osiris has a wife. You want me to assume her role.”
“I need you as my Isis. Together, we can truly live like gods here. Apart, we are vulnerable. They know you are my wife. A god may please himself with humans, but he would only marry another god. If you are human, then I am not who I claim to be.”
“And aren’t we human?” She said it not as a practical question, but as a philosophical one. “I told you to be a god. But, underneath that, aren’t we human?”
“What is a god but a man or woman who inspires those around him?”
It was a new thought for her, which took a few moments to digest. Perhaps he was right. Slowly, she said, “What about the son? What about Osiris and Isis’s son Horus? I don’t think the Lion will willingly take on the role.”
“He already has the role, like it or not,” the Captain said. “He’ll have to learn to behave himself.”
CHAPTER 22
Present Day
Pruit stared up at the face of a tall black man. He wore a loose skirt of fabric that had been twined around his legs and groin, and a wide, flat, disc-like necklace of joined beads. His dark skin looked unhealthy; his eyes were rheumy, and the skin beneath them sagged, though he could not have been more than twenty years old. He had several open sores on his ankles and around his mouth. He stood at the edge of a village of mud-brick huts, a guard, holding a long spear with buzzard feathers tied beneath the spearhead.
The village behind him was nearly still. A single cow wandered listlessly through the mud between the huts, its ribs sticking out beneath its dirty hide. There was a cooking fire somewhere, but there was little else to mark this place as a living town.
The man spoke English, after a fashion, and he seemed much impressed with Pruit’s clothing. She was wearing her red fullsuit, had been walking with it on for several days. Though she did not know it, her suit was much like the orange biohazard suits worn by a disease team that had passed through this village during the previous week. This made her a figure of authority and some awe to the young man.
She had rolled up the legs of the suit and her feet were in her traveling boots. Her right foot was still quite stiff, but the suit had repaired it enough for her to walk. Her left ankle, which had also been broken, was useable only because she kept the suit over it day and night.
She did not know how long she had lain in the shadow of the pod. Weeks certainly. She could not remember sealing her fullsuit, but apparently, she had managed to do so.
The burns on her hands and arms were gone. All that remained were a few trace scars, dark against the copper brown of her skin, and even these were fading. The suit’s gloves hung loose, but her hands were still protected by a thin layer of webbing from the suit. Her head was uncovered during the day. At night she sealed the suit fully and let it continue its repair work.
“I need to find an airport,” Pruit said again, speaking as clearly as she could.
“Aer-port,” the man repeated, still not understanding.
She realized that he would have little need of that word here, in one of the more underdeveloped areas on the planet. She mimed an airplane’s wings. “Airplane.”
Understanding dawned quickly with this visual demonstration. “Aeroplane,” the man said, smiling and showing her a row of yellowing teeth.
“Yes!”
“No aeroplane,” he said gravely, shaking his head. “Maybe Shinyanga.”
“Shinyanga?” The word meant nothing to her.
“Aeroplane in Shinyanga,” the man repe
ated.
“Oh,” she said, understanding now. She pulled out her map and located the town he was referring to. Pointing to it and holding the map up for him, she asked, “Shinyanga?”
The man made a gesture of dismissal. Pruit understood. He did not read, and maps were of no consequence to him. But it did not matter; she could see Shinyanga. It was twenty-five miles away and could be reached, she estimated, with another day’s walk.
She smiled at him. “Thank you.” She put out a hand to shake his. The man clasped her hand, smiling at the city custom he had seen only once or twice in his village.
As Pruit’s hand met his, she felt something in her fullsuit change. The webbing over her hand began to thicken, concentrating the suit’s energy there. Her eyes turned to the small readout mounted in the fabric on her right shoulder. It was flashing a warning. Her hand was in contact with a threatening virus.
The man looked at her a bit apprehensively when she did not release him. Not wanting to offend her, however, he did not pull his hand away.
Pruit watched as the webbing achieved maximum thickness and her suit kicked into action. The webbing had grown partially over the skin of the man’s hand as well, though she held it at an angle that would prevent him from seeing this.
After a few moments, the readout displayed a calmer message. The suit had analyzed the virus and could now neutralize it.
Pruit smiled at the man, trying to put him at ease so he would not pull his hand away. In another moment, the suit relaxed. The webbing on their hands faded back to its usual level. She released her hold on him.
“Thank you,” she said again.
The man looked down at his hand. There was an odd sensation in the fingers and palm where the suit webbing had gently penetrated his skin. He rubbed at his fingers and stared at Pruit. She had powers he did not understand, but for him this was normal—he had not understood the workings of those others in biohazard suits, either.
“It’s all right,” she said. She could see that he already looked better. Nothing obvious had changed, but there was a glow of life about him that had not been present before. His body now had the cure to the virus within it.
She turned and began to walk away. The man looked after her for a few moments, then ran back into the village. Pruit smiled. Through touch and breath and saliva, he would spread his cure to his family and then to his town.
After several minutes, she had passed out of sight from the village and back into open land. She was crossing an area of low hills and open plains. There were animals everywhere. She should have been enthralled with the environment. Instead, she felt unprotected.
She glanced up at the sky. It made her nervous, those endless reaches of blue hanging above her from such a height. Even after days of walking in the open, she was uncomfortable, constantly reaching for the face mask that should have been there but wasn’t. Outside had never meant anything pleasant to her, but it would be a constant feature of this mission. She would have to teach herself to relax.
CHAPTER 23
Jean-Claude stood behind the Mechanic’s chair, giving the conversation just enough attention to know when the Mechanic would need something from him. They were in a café, sitting at a small table in one of the establishment’s shady corners. Cairo was a city of cafés, for they were the place where men could meet and discuss the events of the neighborhood or the world while smoking and playing cards or dominos or backgammon. Every street had at least one, whether it was simply a few tables and chairs set up in an alley or a large, open saloon with fine wooden tables and attentive waiters, like the one where the Mechanic and his slaves now sat.
The Mechanic had a small cup of Turkish coffee in front of him, which he did not deign to drink. Nate occupied the neighboring seat. Across from them were two Frenchmen whose casual clothing belied their actual stature. Nate was doing the talking for the Mechanic, and he wore, as he often did in recent days, a slightly dazed look. His tan silk suit, which had been crisp and fresh when he had first laid eyes on the Mechanic, was now wrinkled and frayed. That was also a fair description of Nate himself. Weeks as the Mechanic’s slave, meeting with such men as these, sleeping only little and with difficulty, had taken their toll on him.
“What guarantee do we have of the technology’s validity?” the more senior of the two Frenchman asked, his educated English softened with a slight accent.
“You have this,” Nate said. He drew out several sheets of paper from his briefcase and slid them across the table. The men glanced at the papers briefly, their eyes traveling over rows of mathematical equations and diagrams; then the more senior man folded the papers carefully and slipped them into the pocket of his loose linen jacket.
“Those formulas do not offer the key to the technology itself,” Nate explained, “but they will prove to you that this level of technology does exist and that it is in the possession of my friend.”
Jean-Claude noted that Nate said the word “friend” easily. Nate had given up hating the Mechanic and now moved through the days in a semi-trance, simply praying for his own release. Jean-Claude was thankful that he himself was not so far gone.
He thought about his situation. He was addicted to a drug that could be supplied only by the Mechanic. While in the grip of that drug, he experienced heights of awareness and energy he had never before, except perhaps in childhood, reached. When the drug wore off, he was transformed into a husk of a man begging for an injection. When the Mechanic chose to withhold the drug for a few hours to punish him—which happened quite frequently—Jean-Claude would experience wrenching convulsions as he lost control of his muscles and felt the craving envelope him. Still, in the in-between times, when the drug was wearing off but still there, he maintained some semblance of his old self. Nate had lost even this.
Jean-Claude’s right hand moved up to his neck, where his small gold cross hung. “Give me strength, dear God,” he breathed.
“Satisfy yourselves regarding the technology,” Nate was saying. “He will expect your offer within seven days. By the fifteenth of the month he will decide which offer to accept.”
Jean-Claude watched the impassive faces of the Frenchmen. He was sure they would soon be convinced of the verity of the Mechanic’s claims. Everyone was. In front of him the Mechanic sat silently. He did not speak in these meetings. His head was only inches away from Jean-Claude’s hands. It would be so easy to reach around the man’s neck and squeeze the life out of him.
Jean-Claude released his cross and gripped the back of the Mechanic’s chair. But his hands would go no farther. The Mechanic’s death would mean Jean-Claude’s death as well. He was not that desperate yet. He would find a way, somehow, to take out his revenge. When he did, the Mechanic would learn what it meant to cower.
CHAPTER 24
Pruit stood in a bathroom at the Cairo airport examining her left ankle. She was seated inside one of the convenient changing stalls ranged at one end of the large room, which were lit with yellowish fluorescent lights. Outside the stall, dozens of women passed in and out, speaking to each other or to their children in Arabic and English and several other languages.
Pruit was in her underwear, Earth-style underwear now, which she had bought in Nairobi along with two outfits of Western clothing. She ran a hand up and down her ankle. The bone was healing nicely; she could walk without a limp now. The leg was still stiff when she stretched, but even the stiffness was fading. As long as she continued to sleep in the fullsuit at night, she would soon be completely repaired.
She had waited three days in the tiny town of Shinyanga, sleeping on the covered cement platform at the edge of the small paved strip that served as an airport. In had rained constantly and heavily, a great downpour lit at night by streaks of lightening. On the third day the sky had cleared and an airplane had landed. She had managed to barter with small items from her pack for a seat and had taken the twin-engine propeller to Nairobi.
In Nairobi she had entered real Earth civilization. She had take
n off the fullsuit, for she found immediately that it attracted attention. She had not been able to take another flight to Cairo that day because she lacked a passport. People spoke English there, but the local accent was difficult for her to understand. She had spent two confusing days in Nairobi until she had managed, at last, to acquire a forged British passport bearing her picture.
She had now arrived in Cairo, which had been sprawled below the plane like an enormous brown blight upon the Nile and its fertile land. This was a much larger and more metropolitan city, and she was anxious about her ability to pass as an Earth native.
She examined the contents of the small backpack she carried. She had collapsed her fullsuit, and it was now stowed neatly in the bag. With it were her weapons: two knives and two small firearms. She had disassembled her weapons to make them less noticeable, and their odd shapes and essentially biological construction had allowed them to escape detection.
She slipped her knife blades onto the hafts, clicking them into place. The knives were made of white solid-reed with a tensile strength greater than many metals. The blades honed themselves, shedding layers of reed cells as needed to keep the edges fine. The hafts were of the same material, and when she joined them to the blades, the seam grew together, making a single piece. She strapped one knife at her right ankle and the other to her ribs, below her right arm.
The firearms were also of solid-reed. They were worn on the underside of her palm, with the flat butts extending up her arm a few inches and locking gently around her wrist. The barrel of the weapons rested along the underside of her middle finger and was held in place by tabs that wrapped around her index and ring fingers.
One gun was designed to shoot laser light of varying intensity. The other shot small deadly bullets of the toughest solid-reed Herrod could produce. Pruit was less comfortable with the second gun. Growing up under city domes, she thought of projectile weapons as extremely dangerous. Every Kinley child had nightmares of throwing something at the dome too hard and seeing a crack form, then hearing the hiss as radioactive air began to seep in.