“Look, sir, it’s coming from her skin.”
“No,” she said again. “No…”
“It’s some kind of tissue…”
“Look how fast it’s growing…”
“Have you ever seen anything…?”
“Quick, call in Doctor Faruk…!”
“No…” she whispered.
Then, above the other noises issuing from the surrounding rooms, there were running footsteps and a bang as a door flew open.
“Pruit? Pruit?”
She knew that voice.
“Pruit!”
“Eddie…” She was only whispering. “Eddie!” It was all she could manage, but he had heard her. Through half-closed eyes, she saw Eddie shove the doctor aside.
“What are you doing?” the doctor asked in Arabic. “Get him out of here!”
“This is my wife!” Eddie yelled in Arabic. “This is my wife, and I have a doctor for her at home!”
The doctor and one of the male nurses tried to grab him, but he executed a neat open-handed punch to each, giving the blows just enough force to push the men out of the way without actually hurting them. “I’m taking her. Let me go!”
“Yes,” she mumbled in Arabic, so they would understand him. “He is my husband.” Even in her half-conscious state, she saw the intelligence behind Eddie’s claim. The husband ruled in Muslim cultures. He could even deny his wife medical treatment.
The men moved toward Eddie again, but uncertainly. His frantic words were perfectly delivered and held them at bay. “Let me go! I’m taking her home!”
He yanked the IV from Pruit’s hand and scooped her up from the table. They did not try to stop him. Pruit put her arms around his shoulders, and he held her to his chest and helped her wrap her legs around his waist.
“Wait,” she mumbled, gesturing toward the gurney desperately, her arm barely responding to her command. Eddie grabbed the small bag she was reaching for, and Pruit clutched it.
“We’re going,” he said. “We’re going!”
He backed out of the room’s swinging double doors as the medical team stared at him. Then he was jogging down a narrow hallway with Pruit in his arms. There were people waiting in the hall, sitting on benches and the floor, with everything from minor wounds to serious injuries. There was a smell of disease and death. This was a hospital for the indigent, and many had made temporary homes in the passage.
Eddie picked his way over them, clutching Pruit, who felt insubstantial in his arms. Her skin was cold and damp. He reached the end of the hall and passed into a large reception area. Children were crying here, and it was a swarm of unwashed humanity. He pushed his way between, and then they passed through the outer doors, and Pruit could feel the night breeze on her skin. She was still in her underwear, and a shiver ran up her back.
A car was waiting. Eddie bundled her into the back seat, then slid in next to her. There was a blanket on the floor, and he wrapped it around her.
“Back to the hotel,” he told the driver. He looked back toward the hospital. It was unlikely that anyone would follow them, but his eyes lingered at the door. The driver was staring back at his passengers. “Now!” Eddie yelled.
The car lurched into the street.
“Eddie…” she breathed.
He leaned over her and examined her.
“What happened?”
“How did you find me, Eddie?” she asked, still in the pleasant grip of the painkiller.
“When you didn’t come back and you didn’t answer your phone, I started checking hospitals…You’re hard to describe, you know. Not exactly white, not exactly anything else. Why is the thing you’re searching for always in the last place you look? Thank god I found you when I did…Your shoulder!”
“I can fix it…I can fix it…”
He pulled the blanket more tightly around her, holding her upright. Her face and neck were covered with deep bruises. “Pruit, who did this to you?”
Her eyes were falling closed, but she knew she could not sleep. There was something wrong…She remembered now. The human Lucien had been following her. She forced her eyes open. “Eddie, there’s a tracer on me. They tagged me…”
“Who tagged you?”
“I’ll explain later.” It was difficult to speak. It was difficult to stay awake. “Check my back…” With her right arm, she began to pull off her undershirt.
“Check for what?”
“Something by the spine, something small and hard.” The spine would be the usual location for a Lucien tag. That was one piece of Lucien procedure she had learned in training. Over generations of blockade, more than a few humans had been tagged by Lucien.
He did not understand, but he did as she said, helping her get the undershirt off and pulling the blanket up over her chest so she was not exposed to the other cars. Female nudity was frowned upon in Egypt. The hired driver was turning back to look at them.
“Mind your business!” Eddie snapped at him. The man brought his eyes back to the road.
Eddie studied her spine. “I don’t see anything.”
“Feel with your hands, next to the vertebrae.”
He ran his fingers up and down her spine, carefully feeling each bone. There was something at her mid-back, something that felt wrong. “There’s something here. But I can’t see it.”
“Get light,” she said weakly.
“Stop the car!” The car pulled over beneath a streetlight, and Eddie examined the spot on her back. There was something there, an almost imperceptible lump. “I think I found it.”
She reached around, and he put her hand on the spot. “Yes, that’s it. Cut it out.”
“What?”
“Cut it out, Eddie! They’ll use it to find me.”
“Who will?”
“Just cut it out! My knife…” She gestured to the bag she had made him take from the hospital.
“I can’t cut you!”
“You can. Just do it. Don’t think. No…wait.” She activated her skinsuit control panel and turned the suit off so it would not interfere with his operation. “Now do it.”
Eddie took her white knife in his hand. He did not allow himself to hesitate. Instead, he cut into her back, making a small incision just on top of the lump. Pruit gripped her knees. The painkiller was fading. Eddie touched the cut, and he could feel something hard inside. Pruit gasped as he prodded the wound.
“I’m sorry…”
“Pry it out!”
He took the tip of the knife and dug it beneath the lump. With a downward flick of his wrist, he pushed the tracer to the surface. It was small and oval, the size of a tiny ball bearing, covered in her blood. He pulled it out of her, then grabbed her undershirt and pressed it against the wound.
“I got it.” He held out the tracer for her to examine. She glanced at it, hardly able to focus her eyes. “Throw it out.”
Eddie rolled down the window and jettisoned it.
“Good,” she breathed, leaning back against the seat, long past exhaustion. “Good…” Her eyes closed.
Gently, Eddie pulled her onto his lap, holding the shirt against her back to stop the blood, holding her body to his chest. He had been searching the city’s dozen or so hospitals since the late afternoon, his panic level steadily rising. Even so, he had not realized how much he cared for her until this moment. He held her to him and knew suddenly that she was precious to him. “There’s never a dull moment with you, is there, Pruit Pax of Senetian?” he whispered into her hair, kissing her head.
She let her head fall onto his shoulder, feeling his strength and grateful for it. Then she was asleep in Eddie’s arms as the car took to the road again.
CHAPTER 39
Slowly coming back to consciousness on the floor of Jean-Claude’s apartment, Adaiz tried to move. Pain made this impossible on the first try. The upper part of his left arm was burning, as was his left side, below his ribs. He could feel damage to his muscles.
He shut his eyes and rolled himself over on h
is back. The motion was agony, but he could also see the limits of his pain. Most of his body still worked, and he had not lost an excessive amount of blood. His recovery, Omani willing, would not be too lengthy.
He brought himself slowly to his feet, fighting lightheadedness. There was a pool of smeared blood on the floor, but his shoulder wound had clotted. He studied it, then glanced around and found his shirt, which Jean-Claude had stripped from him. He picked it up, held it between his good hand and his teeth, and carefully tore it into strips. He wrapped his shoulder. With difficulty, he secured the bandages in a knot. Then he wrapped the long cut running under his ribs.
With his wounds bandaged, he forced himself to walk around the room. He nearly fainted several times, but he maintained consciousness by hanging his head low and holding onto furniture. As he approached the street-side window of the apartment, he heard a car pull up below.
Slowly, he leaned his head closer. Down in the street, a taxi had stopped and out of it stood the gray-colored man Pruit had been following.
Adaiz moved as quickly as he could, pushing himself away from the window and moving along the counter to the old black phone that sat in the corner. He picked up the receiver and was relieved to hear a dial tone. He had taken time to practice with phones and understood how they worked. He quickly dialed the number he had memorized.
There were two rings and then a hesitant voice at the other end. “Hello?” It was Enon-Amet, using one of the few English words he knew and pitching his voice low and quiet to emulate a human whisper.
“Brother, it is Adaiz.”
“What’s happened? Are you all right?”
“Yes and no,” Adaiz said. “But I must hurry. The man Pruit was following is here, and I have a plan.”
“Where are you?”
“That can wait. Tell me, are the tracers on Pruit still working?”
“It appears she has discovered one of them, but the other remains intact.”
“Excellent.”
“Adaiz, are you safe?”
“I think so, Older Brother. And I believe I have two bargaining chips that will win us success in both aspects of this mission. I will be back at the hotel soon.”
He hung up the phone. There were footsteps on the stairs.
CHAPTER 40
Nate sat with the Mechanic in the back of a taxi, heading through narrow streets toward Jean-Claude’s old apartment. He was experiencing the a tightening of his skin, which heralded the onset of shivers. Soon his digestive tract would begin to cramp and the pain would come. He would start to moan, and this would annoy the Mechanic, perhaps even delaying his antidote. Silently, he counted the seconds.
Outside the car, the seamier side of Cairo flashed by, hashish parlors and none-too-discreet brothels. There was an underground disco on this block, and young men teemed in front of it. Once upon a time, Nate would have been drawn to such a place. It seemed another life.
Next to him, the Mechanic said nothing, but Nate could tell he was pleased. Their meeting with the Chinese had gone very well. After several minutes of discussion, it had become apparent that the Chinese had already studied the sample formulas at length. They had, apparently, stolen them from one of the other countries negotiating with the Mechanic. They had already concluded that the technology was real, and they had used this afternoon’s meeting to make the Mechanic an offer. It had been very generous for an opening bid.
Nate anticipated a few counter demands from the Mechanic, to which the Chinese would doubtless agree; then the deal would be sealed. Then…what? What would happen to him? He squinted his eyes as he felt the first cramp coming on.
Perhaps his fate would not be so bad. He had, after all, organized everything for the Mechanic: bank accounts away from prying eyes, a nondescript safe deposit box where the manuals were housed. He had even been the one to suggest that only the Mechanic himself should know the location of that box. The key for the Mechanic’s future safety lay in holding no secrets. He would hand over the technology, all of it, and then focus would shift from him to the technology itself. This was facilitated because the Mechanic himself was not proficient in the technology, a fact Nate had carefully made known to each interested party. Once he handed over the goods, he would, however, still be needed to translate the Haight manuals, and this would protect him.
In helping the Mechanic establish his plan of action, Nate had asked him what he hoped to achieve from his negotiations. The Mechanic’s answer was simple: “To live like a god among men.” When asked to elaborate, he could not, other than to say he wanted the means at his disposal to have anything he wished.
In his dogged way, Nate had simply incorporated this desire into the equation. To live like that, the Mechanic would need a considerable amount of money, as well as protection. Thus, the country that offered these in the greatest amounts would win the negotiation.
The Chinese, with offers of immediate Swiss citizenship—something Nate had not known was possible, but which he was convinced was a valid offer—as well as certain specified sums and other accoutrements, would likely be the Mechanic’s country of choice.
The remainder of their afternoon and evening, however, had been consumed by three additional offers from new countries, countries who had materialized out of the woodwork. The Mechanic had listened patiently, but Nate was fairly sure he had already made his decision.
The cramps were worse as the taxi edged up onto the sidewalk and came to a stop. Without so much as a glance at Nate, the Mechanic left the car and headed into the tenement building. Nate paid the driver, then followed him inside. They had spent a week living in this apartment, and both knew the tiny, winding stairway by heart.
“Shall we see what the whore dragged home?” the Mechanic called back, moving quickly up the stairs.
The smell of urine and trash hit them as they reached the landing, but Nate was now too uncomfortable to hold his breath.
The Mechanic drew his handgun as he approached Jean-Claude’s door. He saw that it was ajar and paused. No sounds issued from inside. He prodded the wood, and the door swung inward.
Sitting in the room’s single chair, bandaged at shoulder and side, was a young man. He held a knife casually in one hand. Neither the Mechanic nor Nate had caught a glimpse of Adaiz when he followed Pruit earlier that day, so he was a stranger to them.
“Who are you?” the Mechanic asked. The Mechanic’s words were translated by his jawline device into English.
The young man smiled in a strange, mechanical fashion. “I have an offer for you,” he said. “One that no country will match.”
“What happened to the black whore?”
“He has been freed by the other prisoner. And that girl is part of my offer.”
The Mechanic moved into the room and leaned himself against the low shelves along one wall, his gun trained on the newcomer. “I’m listening,” he said.
Nate forced himself to take a seat on the floor. He took one of the cushions that lay scattered about and shoved it into his abdomen. His body had begun to double up. It would only be minutes before he began to moan aloud. He would suppress those moans as long as humanly possible. His pain must wait until the offer had been heard.
CHAPTER 41
2590 BC
Year 17 of Kinley Earth Survey
The monarchs of the [Fourth] dynasty were gods: they alone after death were privileged to journey across the heavens with their retainers in the divine barque.
—Ancient Egypt: Its Culture and History
The foundation blocks had been laid over the preceding weeks, and now the builders were beginning on the second course of stones. The foundation itself covered thirteen acres of sandy desert, sunk below surface level to rest on bedrock. There was a large outcropping of natural rock near the center of the foundation, which rose fifty feet above the desert floor. This would serve as an additional anchor to the structure.
The courses on top of the foundation would rise up and inward, four sides forming
a pyramid, sloping at an angle of fifty-one degrees, to meet in a point nearly five hundred feet above the desert.
The size of the individual blocks was limited by the maximum volume of mold in which a rock culture consistently could be grown. Despite the Captain’s attempts at preserving Kinly knowledge, much of the Engineer’s building prowess had already been lost. This was inevitable in a primitive culture that turned technology into superstitious ritual, diluting it in the process. Now, if they used too large a mold, the resulting rock appeared uneven and artificial. The volume was also modified by the shape of rock needed for particular locations in the structure and the type of rock culture used. For the granite, which was to encase the primary interior room of this building, the builders would produce slabs of over fifty tons. Elsewhere, they would weigh as much as two hundred tons.
The Captain stood atop a wooden scaffolding that had been erected to view the progress of the pyramid. He had aged, in recent years, to a sliver head of hair and a distinguished, masculine face. He wore a robe of thick white linen, trimmed in gold, and plaited leather sandals of the finest make. His hair was oiled and braided behind his neck. He had become his own vision of divinity in human form.
With him stood Khufu, the twelve-year-old king of all Egypt and the Captain’s blood son. Khufu had his mother’s brown skin, but his hair was light—not blond, but nearly so—and his eyes had been muted from dark brown to gray. His head already cleared the Captain’s shoulder, and he was muscular for his age. He wore the tight, short royal skirt, with his feet and chest left bare. On his chest hung a magnificent pectoral of a falcon, and there were gold-and-silver armbands on his upper arms. The nemes, the royal kerchief, was over his head, with a jeweled cobra arching up from his brow. His young chin was adorned with the false beard for this public outing.
Snefru, Khufu’s legal father, had died the year before of an intestinal ailment. Khufu had been the unquestioned heir to the throne. His divine parenthood had been officially acknowledged, and his mother, Hetepheres, was queen of the highest rank. With Khufu’s youth, the Captain felt the reins of the empire settling into his own hands.