"In this business, you can’t trust nobody," the Emperor told me much later. Only Izzy was in a position to know all the details at that time, but now, on Sandy, it’s immortalized in the song, "Marriage is Just Two Alien Agents Hiding from Each Other, Anyway," Number 423 on the list, last I heard, about a billionth of a second ago.
By inseminating the Earther, effecting the commingling of the Magellanic and Milky Way branches of Abu’s great family, the Emperor and my father (and, unknown to him, Nora) had planned to produce the Sphinx’s Messiah. "Yeah, every time we tried to get through to Abu, it was ‘ADDRESSEE UNKNOWN,’ the Emperor told me once, over neutron latte. "It’s enough to make a guy agnostic. So we figured we’d try a little psychology."
But then they didn’t know how to use me to get through to Abu. Undercover as "Johnny Abilene," world-traveling musical goodwill ambassador, my father left Nora and me to look for a clue. Everywhere Johnny gigged, he buttonholed Egyptologists, astrophysicists, and Edgar Cayce fans.
Neither the Emperor, Nora, nor Johnny actually understood how to get to Abu via Mel until Shaman inadvertently showed them the way. Then it was a race to avert disaster; the Earther Shaman, after his own selfish ends, threatened to thwart the entire proceeding. The Magellanic Emperor sent Gypsy in the cafe ship, to help out Nora. The Emperor had, of course, first prepared the way by lining the North American throughway system with rest stop cafes that resembled the Magellanic craft, so Gypsy’s cafe could land undetected.
And if you think that any of this is less reliable information than the Battle of Hastings or the invention of the cotton gin?which may change any moment due to epoche or political revisionism?then, Earther, you don’t understand history.
Johnny Abilene was astounded. Just imagine how I felt. And now she was pregnant again?my mother, with my child. Whatever in hell "my" had come to mean!
In the confusion following Nasser’s death, Izzy was sprung, and all tours of the Giza funerary complex were put on hold. Lila Kodzi led Izzy on horseback, with Sarvaduhka, Johnny Abilene and one of the Haymakers, just arrived from the other Memphis via Lufthansa. Nobody stopped them. I saw them from above and from below. I felt hooves echo against the roofs of underground chambers; I saw them, tiny, remote, from millions of miles above the sky. And from inside their skins, I felt them also, not chaotically as when Shaman had pierced me, but clearly, from a standpoint: Abu al-Hawl’s.
Izzy waved a little navy-blue book. "I got it! I got it, Melly baby. I got you a passport. We’re gonna haul ass out of the Sahara." They cantered into the enclosure. "His Polaroid did it; the sun spoiled my Fuji’s. Sarvaduhka’s a hero. And you, you’re great too, boy. You got Johnny Abilene here, and he’s our main man." Izzy dismounted and held the passport photo up for the Sphinx to see.
Lila jumped down beside him and twined herself around his arm. "You lovely one-brow, you are a crazy man everywhere, just like in bed. How will you get the Great Sphinx through customs?"
My father clapped a husky arm around Sarvaduhka. Sarvaduhka was cadaverous and grim on the outside. Inside, he was set to explode. "He gets everything,"?I could hear him thinking? "female action included, and my squareback thrown in, free mileage, everything. And what do I get? Saddle sore."
"It so happens," Izzy crowed, "that if we can take him through during the hour just after sunset, the customs official lets it right by. He just thinks maybe something’s kind of funny, but he can’t put his finger on it, see what I mean?"
"Why do you have to move him at all," said Sarvaduhka, and he thought, "… you stupid, back-stabbing fornicator?"
"I’ll ignore the last part, Marmaduke, but the fact is, I gotta take him into the shop. I can’t finish fixing him against Shaman out here in the Sahara. My skin’s too pale, okay?"
"I will not bother to ask how you expect to move a sixty-five-foot-high limestone statue across the desert, through customs, and up the gangplank onto an airplane, and convince everyone that he is simply a mid-level executive at Coca-Cola. Two hundred forty feet long, Izzy!"
"Good work," said Izzy, "you’ve been listening to the Son et Lumiere. I get his peanuts and that on the airplane, don’t forget. I called it at the Cairo Khan Suites."
They were gathering under my chin, where my plaited stone beard used to hang, the Pharaonic sign that shaded Tuthmosis when he dug me out of the sand. My father, Johnny Abilene, passed around his canteen; it was a scrotal second-hander from Death Valley. "I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time, Your Majesty," he said to Izzy.
"Don’t call me that," Izzy hissed, "not in front of him."
"Okay, Johnny A.," said Izzy. "I think you know what to do."
The Haymaker produced a ukulele and started strumming backup, while Johnny tightened his bowels as if he were about to defecate. Johnny pursed his lips and squinted. The sky blinked black and then shone so brilliantly that they all had to squint and shade their eyes. There was a faint rumble from deep below.
Johnny was peripherizing. "I’m gonna impossibilize that gigantus right down to a midgy," he grunted. "He can walk among us like a regular man, as long as we don’t look too hard, and I’m gonna fix it so’s we can’t, and so nobody can, till he gets to Izzy’s shop."
Sarvaduhka was unimpressed. "What about the plane? It won’t hold him."
"Anything that touches old Abu, once I’ve peripherized him, is gonna fall down into the same squint and follow along."
"Do it, cowboy," Izzy said, sweating under his pith helmet as the sun crossed over the zenith.
Johnny gave one last push, "Ee-hah!" Nothing had changed, but suddenly, everyone was looking at me differently, that is, without craning their necks! It was no longer possible to focus directly on the Sphinx; I was quarantined to the corner of everyone’s eye, where a lot can pass, believe me, that would terrify down center. I was as if man-sized. Johnny patted me on my stone shoulders, gave me a kiss, they all remounted, and we headed out.
came across the desert like a swarm of locusts. They were swinging "spirit catchers" over their heads, dowel-and-rubber-band doohickeys furiously buzzing.
We had left the Sphinx enclosure. Dad had given me sunglasses and a white polyester suit to wear. Izzy stuck a briefcase in my paw and hoped that the headdress would pass for a touristy gewgaw. For reasons unknown, the headdress, unlike my gigantic size, earthen complexion, missing appendages, and leonine corpus, could not be easily camouflaged. I walked in the middle, flanked by Johnny and the Haymaker, a baritone in a bolo tie, with Izzy and Lila Kodzi in front and Sarvaduhka bringing up the rear.
Dad and the baritone Haymaker had been singing:
And there they swarmed, Shaman’s Space People, a dozen humans swathed in what looked like twisted bedsheets. They swept straight for us over the sand. Dad and the Haymaker fell silent. Izzy started beeping.