Cairo nodded. The mummy made a face.
What's more, guv, the high priests had it all wrong up there. The pharaoh dies and being a god they're going to send him on his eternal trip. Right. But why do they assume he'd naturally like to have his queen and his playmates and servants on the trip with him? For company? Well they're crazy. We're packed in down here and there's nothing natural about the situation at all. Did they really think we were going to tiptoe around serving him while the concubines flopped on their backs and the queen smiled and the cats did appreciative somersaults? Wrong. Dead wrong. Things don't work that way. He may be a god and used to living forever but the rest of us are just tired to death of this trip of his. Tell the truth. Have you ever seen so many bored faces as you see down here?
Cairo shook his head.
Of course you haven't. They all resent this trip as much as I do. There's not a concubine here who's even looked in his direction in three thousand years. Not a cat who's done a tumble one way or the other, not a servant who's lifted a finger. Why should we? He can play with himself for all the concubines care. As for the queen, you saw what happened when you gave her a poke. Nothing but foul gases inside and her teeth are going bad and she's lost her tongue. Her smile was a fake, as you saw. In fact can you guess what it was that made her teeth go bad and withered her tongue down to a stump? That's right, that's the kind of king our Djer was and drinking all the time too. Her smile was always fake. But now that Djer's on his trip he can't get even a little cup of drink to help him face the truth. He's dry, as dry as I am, and you can't imagine how dry that is. Well that's some joke on him, but you're not staying down here are you, guv? You'd be a fool to do that. You may think you'd like to live forever, but I can tell you this is no kind of a party to be in.
I'm lost, said Cairo. Where's the exit?
Two cars forward. Look for a large sedan chair on the left, it's right beneath the shaft. Put there a long time ago to serve as a stepladder. He must have caught his though, we never saw him again. Got away with my mistress's right arm but not much else.
Thanks, said Cairo, I'll be going. By the way, how many pharaohs are there down here?
Counting that lout I used to work for, thirty-three in all. And Egypt is well rid of their kind. They did nothing but watch us build monuments to them. Strictly thinking of themselves, and now on this trip that's all they can do forever, and you wonder how satisfying that really is. Well good luck, guv.
The candle flickered. The mummy's face drooped sorrowfully. Cairo waved from the end of the compartment and pushed his way to the sedan chair two cars forward. He lifted himself into the shaft and made the long climb back up through the arms and legs and detached heads, the clouds of dust, to the desert night.
The next morning he boarded a steamer down the Nile. But when the boat finally docked in Cairo on that clear spring day in 1914, when he rushed to the sepulcher beneath the public garden beside the river to deliver his spectacular news, he found an unfamiliar lid on the massive sarcophagus he had visited so often, a painted carving of Cheops' mother in place of the dry crinkled smile he knew so well.
Menelik Ziwar, former slave and unique scholar and absentee discoverer of thirty-three pharaohs, had quietly died in his sleep leaving Cairo Martyr sole owner of the largest divine cache in history, a pantheon of ancient gods with which to avenge the injustices done to his people.
The last day of December 1921.
Snow flurries came and went outside the smudged windows of the Arab coffee shop where Cairo Martyr and Munk Szondi and O'Sullivan Beare were playing poker. They played into the evening and were still playing the following morning, having moved on at midnight to a curious apartment in the Moslem Quarter which the Irishman said belonged to a friend of his.
The apartment had two lofty vaulted rooms. The front room was empty save for an enormous bronze sundial set into the wall near the door, a set of chimes attached to it. In the back room where they played there was a tall narrow antique Turkish safe in one corner, a giant stone scarab with a sly smile on its face in another corner, and nothing else.
They recessed for a few hours on New Year's Day and were back before twilight, sitting on the floor in their overcoats between the safe and the scarab, Martyr and Szondi wearing gloves, O'Sullivan Beare in mittens. It was almost as cold in the room as it was outside but no one seemed to notice it. Cairo Martyr had the deal. He turned to O'Sullivan Beare.
Who exactly is the friend of yours who owns this place?
Goes by the name of Haj Harun, said Joe. Formerly an antiquities dealer, now on permanent duty patrolling the Old City.
For what?
Possible invasion attempts. These days the Babylonians are worrying him but you can never be sure, tomorrow it could be the Romans or the Crusaders. Keeps a sharp eye out for them. Has to, he says.
Knows what kind of havoc they can wreak in a Holy City.
How long has he been on patrol?
Almost three thousand years, answered Joe, studying his poker hand. Cairo smiled and examined the backs of his untouched, downfaced cards. He singled out one for discard.
Now it may be, said Joe, that you're disinclined to believe me, about such an enormous period of time and all, a tour of duty lasting that long I mean. Many are those who have been disinclined over the millennia. In fact he says I'm the first person to believe in him in the last two thousand years, and how's that for a streak of bad luck? I think I'll be taking two don't you know.
Cairo smiled more broadly and dealt the extra cards, three to Szondi and two to Joe and one to himself.
He leaned down and patted the giant stone scarab on the nose.
Genuine?
Nothing but. Straight from the XVI Dynasty, according to the old article.
What old article?
Haj Harun, the great skin heretofore mentioned.
Is that a fact. Well why does the scarab have such a sly smile on its face?
Don't know, do I. But my guess is the scarab must be in on a secret we're not. Cunning piece of goods, no doubt about it. Jacks or better you said? Well I think I'll just open with this tidy pile of authentic pounds sterling.
All at once the chimes attached to the sundial in the front room creaked noisily and began to strike. Cairo and Munk raised their heads, counting.
Twelve? asked Cairo. At six-thirty in the evening?
Pay no mind, said Joe. That sundial has a habit of sounding off when it pleases, disregarding the rest of us. It loses track of the hours you see, due to darkness and cloudy days and so forth, and then it makes up for them later. Either that or the other way around, makes up for time beforehand so it can take a nap later on. Confusing, isn't it. Those extra hours we just heard could be already past or yet to come, who's to say.
Cairo nodded.
Was it a portable sundial once?
Strange you should be asking such a question because that's exactly what it was. And a hugely heavy piece it must have been to the soul who was lugging it around. Why such crazed activity I couldn't imagine.
Where did it come from originally?
Baghdad, I'm told. Some era called the fifth Abbasid caliphate, according to the old skin. That is to say, it must have played some role in the Thousand and One Nights, which just happens to be Haj Harun's favorite collection of fancies. It was a present to him in the last century from a man who once rented this very room to write a study in.
O'Sullivan Beare smiled.
Haj Harun tried to tell me at first that the man only rented the room for an afternoon. But that didn't seem likely, and then when I heard how big the study was I knew the old man was mixing up time again. More like a dozen years, it must have been.