Dos Santos said to me: "It is a sad thing that has happened to you, my friend. It is to lose the blood of one's own veins to lose one's woman. Your sorrow is great and you cannot be comforted. It is like a smoldering fire that will not die out, and it is a sad and terrible thing.
"Death is cruel and it is dark," he finished, and his eyes were moist-for be it Gypsy, Jew, Moor, or what have you, a victim is a victim to a Spaniard, a thing to be appreciated on one of those mystically obscure levels which I lack.
Then Red Wig came up beside me and said, "Dreadful… Sorry. Nothing else to say, to do, but sorry."
I nodded.
"Thanks."
"And there is something I must ask you. Not now, though. Later."
"Sure," I said, and I returned to watching the river after they left, and I thought about those last two. They had sounded as sorry as everyone else, but it seemed they had to be mixed up in the rolem business, somehow. I was sure, though, that it had been Diane who had screamed while golem had been choking me, screamed for Hasan to stop him. That left Don, and I had by then come to entertain strong doubts that he ever did anything without first consulting her.
Which left nobody.
And there was no real motive apparent…
And it could all have been an accident…
But…
But I had this feeling that someone wanted to kill me. I knew that Hasan was not above taking two jobs at the same time, and for different employers, if there was no conflict of interests.
And this made me happy.
It gave me a purpose, something to do.
There's really nothing quite like someone's wanting you dead to make you want to go on living. I would find him, find out why, and stop him.
Death's second pass was fast, and as much as I would have liked to have pinned it on human agent, I couldn't. It was just one of those diddles of dumb destiny which sometimes come like uninvited guests at dinnertime. Its finale, however, left me quite puzzled and gave me some new, confusing thoughts to think.
It came like this…
Down by the river, that great fertile flooder, that eraser of boundaries and father of plane geometry, sat the Vegan, making sketches of the opposite bank. I suppose had he been on that bank he would have been sketching the one he sat upon, but this is cynical conjecture. What bothered me was the fact that he had come off alone, down to this warm, marshy spot, had not told anyone where he was going, and had brought along nothing more lethal than a No. 2 pencil.
It happened.
An old, mottled log which had been drifting in near the shore suddenly ceased being an old, mottled log. A long, serpentine back end whipped skyward, a bushel full of teeth appeared at the other end, and lots of little legs found solid ground and started acting like wheels.
I yelled and snatched at my belt.
Myshtigo dropped his pad and bolted.
It was on him, though, and I couldn't fire then.
So I made a dash, but by the time I got there it had two coils around him and he was about two shades bluer, and those teeth were closing in on him.
Now, there is one way to make any kind of constrictor loosen up, at least for a moment. I grabbed for its high head, which had slowed down just a bit as it contemplated its breakfast, and I managed to catch my fingers under the scaley ridges at the sides of that head.
I dug my thumbs into its eyes as hard as I could.
Then a spastic giant hit me with a graygreen whip.
I picked myself up and I was about ten feet from where I had been standing. Myshtigo had been thrown further up the bank. He was recovering his feet just as it attacked again.
Only it attacked me, not him.
It reared up about eight feet off the ground and toppled toward me. I threw myself to the side and that big, flat head missed me by inches, its impact showering me with dirt and pebbles.
I rolled further and started to rise, but the tail came around and knocked me down again. Then I scrambled backward, but was too late to avoid the coil it threw. It caught me low around the hips and I fell again.
Then a pair of blue arms wrapped themselves around the body above the coil, but they couldn't hold on for more than a few seconds. Then we were both tied up in knots.
I struggled, but how do you fight a thick, slippery armored cable with messes of little legs that keep tearing at you? My right arm was pinned to my side by then, and I couldn't reach far enough with my left hand to do any more gouging. The coils tightened. The head moved toward me and I tore at the body. I beat at it and I clawed it, and I finally managed to tear my right arm free, giving up some skin in the process.
I blocked with my right hand as the head descended. My hand came up beneath the lower jaw, caught it, and held it there, keeping the head back. The big coil tightened around my waist, more powerful than even the grip of the golem had been. Then it shook its head sidewards, away from my hand, and the head came down and the jaws opened wide.
Myshtigo's struggles must have irritated it and slowed it some, giving me time for my last defense.
I thrust my hands up into its mouth and held its jaws apart.
The roof of its mouth was slimy and my palm began to slip along it, slowly. I pressed down harder on the lower jaw, as hard as I could. The mouth opened another half foot and seemed locked there.
It tried to draw back then, to make me let go, but its coils bound us too tightly to give it the necessary footage.
So it unwound a little, straightening some, and pulling back its head. I gained a kneeling position. Myshtigo was in a sagging crouch about six feet away from me.
My right hand slipped some more, almost to the point where I would lose all my leverage.
Then I heard a great cry.
The shudder came almost simultaneously. I snapped my arms free as I felt the thing's strength wane for a second. There was a dreadful clicking of teeth and a final constriction. I blacked out for a moment.
Then I was fighting free, untangling myself. The smooth wooden shaft which had skewered the boadile was taking the life from it, and its movements suddenly became spasmodic rather than aggressive.
I was knocked down twice by all its lashing about, but I got Myshtigo free, and we got about fifty feet away and watched it die. This took quite awhile.
Hasan stood there, expressionless. The assagai he had spent so much time practicing with had done its work. When George dissected the creature later we learned that the shaft had lodged within two inches of its heart, severing the big artery. By the way, it had two dozen legs, evenly distributed on either side, as might be expected.
Dos Santos stood beside Hasan and Diane stood beside Dos Santos. Everyone else from the camp was there, too.
"Good show," I said. "Fine shot. Thanks."
"It was nothing," Hasan replied.
It was nothing, he had said. Nothing but the death blow to my notion that he had gimmicked the golem. If Hasan had tried to kill me then, why should he have saved me from the boadile?
Unless what he had said back at the Port was the overriding truth-that he had been hired to protect the Vegan. If that was his main job and killing me was only secondary, then he would have had to save me as a by-product of keeping Myshtigo alive.
But then…
Oh hell. Forget it.
I threw a stone as far as I could, and another. Our Skimmers would be flown up to our campsite the following day and we would take off for Athens, stopping only to drop Rameses and the three others at New Cairo. I was glad I was leaving Egypt, with its must and its dust and its dead, half-animal deities. I was already sick of the place.
Then Phil's call came through from the Port, and Rameses called me into the radio tent.