"I know what you mean." Auset added a second bag of fruit to the rst. "No matter how hard I try, I can't make him cynical."

Valerie sighed. "Cynical? I stopped being cynical a few hours ago, when I was lying in a grave. Now I just feel like I'm jumping off into empty space. Dark, empty space."

Auset picked up a grocery bag in each arm. "Yeah? Well, imagine what it feels like to jump with a baby on the way."

* 133 *

v The truck rumbled southward along the Nile. Slouched in a half-sitting position, Derek fell into a doze. Irritated by the vibration of the truck bed, the breeze that whipped loose strands of hair across her face, and the discomfort of knees pressed against the makeshift casket, Valerie could not sleep. She inventoried the supplies. Gallon bottles of water, bags of nuts, fruit, and dates. Wooden poles wrapped in canvas behind her back-probably a canopy, she thought, for when the sun came up. Packing quilts for pillows, seats, or mattresses. Well done, Yussif.

Then she brooded, her arm thrown across her knapsack where, for lack of an alternative, she kept the artifacts. Two strange women had appeared since she was stone-struck, and one of them had kissed her. Who were they, and why were they doing this to her? She was beginning to long for a simpler time, when she labored fruitlessly at the excavation and came back once a week to the arms of Jameela. Success was proving to be a disaster.

She stared, grainy eyed, at the ribbon of road that curved out behind them, watching the lights of the few vehicles that came on the highway and then turned off again. All but one.

Derek stirred in his half sleep, leaning to one side to tuck another layer of quilting under his right buttock. It did not seem to add to his comfort, and in a few moments he was fully awake. "My booty's numb.

Can't feel a thing back there." He peered down at the radiant dial on his wrist. "You can't sleep either, huh?"

Valerie rubbed her knees and shifted again. "Look back there. See those tiny headlights way behind us? They've been following us since Cairo, and they seem to be getting closer. They can't be from a bus, not at this hour, out here in the middle of nowhere. I don't like it."

"Are you sure it's always the same lights?"

"Pretty sure. No, very sure. I've had nothing else to look at for hours now."

"You think it's Vanderschmitt? How can we nd out without stopping?" he asked. "That would sort of defeat the purpose of running away, though, wouldn't it?"

Valerie knocked on the window at the back of the truck cab, and Auset slid it open. "Looks like we're being followed," she shouted over * 134 *

the noise of the wind and the truck motor.

"You think it's the Antiquities people?" Auset called back over her shoulder.

"Whoever they are, they're getting closer. We can't outrun them, and along this road, we can't hide the truck. Any ideas?"

The two in the front conferred. Then Auset twisted around. "Yussif thinks we should stop and let them catch up. There's a village up ahead.

You can see the minaret."

Valerie leaned quickly over the side of the truck and saw a cluster of mud-brick houses squatting gloomily by the side of the highway.

One or two second-story windows held light. Otherwise the only sign of life in the village was the simple minaret lit up with rings of green neon at its far end. She clambered back to the cab window. "Yeah? Go on."

"You and Derek should take the mummy and hide someplace in the village. We'll let the other car catch up. If it's Vanderschmitt, he'll stop. But there'll just be Yussif and me here, importers on the way to Luxor to buy alabaster, right? When they're gone, you can come back."

Yussif shouted over his shoulder, "You must to do it quickly. Soon they are close enough to see you."

"Okay. Say the word," Valerie yelled, yanking open the lid of the cof n-crate.

"What is the word?" Yussif called back, obviously confused.

"Say anything! Say Go! "

"Anything! Go!" The truck lurched to a stop suddenly by the side of the road, just before the rst few houses of the village.

"Right!" Derek slipped his arms under the mummy and lifted it easily. As soon as he cleared the crate, Valerie threw in mats and blankets, covered it again, and jumped to the ground behind him. He was already loping toward the village, a graceful dark phantom against the lighter sand.

No streetlights. That was good. They plunged into the rst dark street, making as much distance as possible from the road. Soundlessly they crept past crumbled walls and crouched nally behind a wheelbarrow and construction debris. At the sound of another vehicle stopping, Derek peered out from behind the pile. "It's a car, all right, not a bus. Two people are getting out. I can't be sure, but I think one of them is wearing a white uniform."

* 135 *

"Merde!" she hissed. "Antiquities. Come on. We've got to get out of here."

They crept out from hiding and ran down another purgatorial alley, ever closer to the center of the village. Impossible to run quietly; someone surely had to have heard them. At the sound of a shutter opening, they crouched again between a wall and a dark mound.

"Oh, great," Derek whispered. "Here we are behind a dung heap in a mud village, in the desert of death. Could it get any worse?"

A dog began to bark.

"Guess it could!" Valerie leapt to her feet. Men's voices became audible and they ed again, around corners, down alleys, trying doors, trying gates. Locked doors everywhere. Locked against what, she wondered.

Finally they stood breathlessly before a large double door.

Mercifully, the handle turned, the door creaked open, and they stumbled inside. They stood for a moment, panting, their backs against the wall, hearing footfall approach and then pass by. One minute. Two minutes.

No one burst in after them.

Derek shifted his bundle to the other shoulder. "Where are we, I wonder?"

Valerie fumbled in her pockets, pulled out the Zippo lighter again, snapped it open. Holding the ame overhead, she walked forward a few meters and stopped before a crudely plastered wall where a red plastic frame hung on a string. Inside the frame, on yellowed paper, Arabic calligraphy curled. "Uh-oh."

"What?"

She followed along the wall and found the expected alcove the height of a man. On the other side of the alcove a second text hung in another red plastic frame. "'God is great,' it says. Oh, merde encore.

It's a damned mosque!"

"Watch your language, then. We're in a place of worship," he hissed.

"Well, if the imam comes in here, he won't be worshipping!" she hissed back.

"What's an emom?"

"Shh!" A door creaked.

They pressed themselves against the wall again. As one of the double doors slowly opened, Valerie looked around for another exit but saw only the narrow door on the other side leading almost certainly to * 136 *

private quarters. They were trapped in a mosque with a stolen mummy, violating two religions. She imagined jail.

"Muuuuuuuh."

Her head snapped toward the sound. Jutting through the crack between the two doors, the white head of a cow turned slowly toward them. The beast blinked at them with bovine serenity, and Valerie exhaled slowly. Out of sight behind the animal's rump, several men cursed. After a few moments of tussling and bumping against the door, the cow looked once more at them with apparent dismay and backed out of the dark interior. An unseen hand pulled the door of the mosque shut.

They stood rigid against the door, listening to the men drag the balking chattel back to its pen. Long minutes of silence followed, broken nally by the soft sound of male chuckling.

Valerie turned angrily to Derek to hush him and saw the faint greenish halo around the mummy. "Rekemheb!" she whispered with quiet annoyance. "Not now!"

The laughter continued. "Have no fear. You are not found. The farmers have withdrawn, and the two men you ee have gone away again in their machine. I have seen it. Your friends search for you now."

"If you could see so much, why didn't you warn us about the cow?" Valerie grumbled.

"That was the goddess who smiled at you. Hathor, looking after her servant."

"Ah, nally!" Derek stepped past her and with his free hand opened the door a crack. "Nobody in sight. I think the coast is clear."

He edged the door farther open and cautiously ventured out again into the alley.

Valerie followed him, whispering in the direction of the mummy, into which the Ka had disappeared again. "Hathor? I don't think so. A cow can't smile. There was de nitely no smile on that cow."

* 137 *

* 138 *

CHAPTER XX:.

OF GODS AND KINGS.

Valerie dozed tfully, her eyes shaded by her hat from the glare of the rising sun. The sound of polite coughing woke her, and she lifted the fedora with her thumb. Rekemheb sat on his cof n in front of her, and Derek, stretched out alongside the cof n, snored softly, apparently in deep, untroubled sleep.

Groggy, she uncapped her trail bottle and took a drink of water to remove the foul taste in her mouth and clear her head. It helped only a little, so she poured a bit into her hand and rubbed it over her face. The evaporating water cooled pleasantly. She looked at Rekemheb again.

In the full morning light he was almost opaque, with only a slight translucency, like wax. He sat on his casket, one leg drawn up in front of him, the other folded beneath him. The gure that he made-she smiled inwardly-was the hieroglyph for "priest."

"We go toward Thebes," he said matter-of-factly.

"No. Southwest from there, to an oasis. Don't worry. You will be safe there."

"I do not worry. Not at all. My grandchild Ayemderak has explained this new journey and this..." He gestured toward the truck cab. "This roaring chariot."

"'Roaring chariot.' That's a good one. Wait. You can talk to Derek?

In English?" She glanced with admiration at her friend who still slept, his head thrown back and his mouth slightly open.

"N-klesh? Yes, we speak his language and mine, together. It is dif cult, but my heart is light to hear his voice. My grandchild told me of this quest which he undertakes for me." He gestured again, this time in the direction they traveled. "Have I understood him correctly?"

* 139 *

Valerie shifted her weight to the opposite hip, which ached slightly less from the rumbling metal truck bed. "Not exactly. It is not only Derek who undertakes this, but all of us. And it is not so much a quest as...well, panicked ight."

A soft frown clouded the priest's face. "Then we ee the followers of Aton? I feared as much."

"I am not sure what you mean by that. The one who dogs us is a sort of religious fanatic, it's true. He follows us for vengeance, but also out of a belief that there is an absolute law about things-and that I have violated it."

Rekemheb gave a wan smile. "You need not explain. I know this sentiment. I saw it in Sethnakht, who stood with others of his sort against our temples. But they were nothing but assassins in the name of their One God."

"Assassination? There's plenty of that going on right now, all over the Middle East. Men of certainty killing each other. Well, some for greed and some for dogma."

The Ka looked out over the desert as if surveying the land. "That is why the gods have sent you to me."

Derek sat up from his rumpled pallet and rubbed circulation back into his face. "I can't believe I nally fell asleep in spite of everything."

He looked up at the entity perched on his casket. "Well, good morning.

Have you two been chitchatting? What about?"

"The reasons for this trip, Vanderschmitt, fanatics in general.

Rekemheb knows them from his time too."

"Did you reassure him that he's safe now?" He reached for his own bottle of water, drinking generously, and then poured some on a handkerchief to rub over his neck.

Valerie shrugged. "I'm not so sure of that myself. He was entombed for over three thousand years, after all. How can we promise him that much protection again?"

Derek reached across the space between them and squeezed her arm. "Stop worrying, girlfriend. We'll nd something. Have faith." He reached into the recess of his backpack and drew out a tiny bottle of lotion.

"Faith? Now there's a word that has me reaching for my gun. Faith just means you have no evidence."

* 140 *

"Sorry! I was trying to comfort, but I guess I hit a nerve." He rubbed the lotion over his face and hands, taking particular care around his lips.

Valerie looked at her own dry hands. "And besides, faith in whom?

In Jesus? Allah? Jehovah? Faith in what? That we'll all be saved? That Elvis lives?"

The Ka tilted his bright head. "Are these your gods?"

Valerie turned her head suddenly. The Ka had understood her remark without translation.

Derek was unfazed. "Uh, yes. Jesus, Allah, Jehovah are all gods.

Netcheru. Only Elvis is not." He laughed softly. "He's just a king."

The Ka persisted. "This Elvis. Where is he king?"