"Fine. Still don't have a hat, though."

"Are you sorry you got into this, Derek? Do you wish sometimes that you had gone back to your hotel after your opera and been spared this?"

"What? And miss this fabulous trip? No. Besides, I had to come.

The prophecy said so. And now I know my ancestor, Rekemheb." He looked down dreamily through long lashes. "It's only been ve days since we found him, and already he's like family."

"That's great for you, to have a lineage now. I confess I'm a little jealous. You have the kind of supernatural family I used to fantasize about as a child. Between six and eight, I imagined I was the secret Daughter of Isis. I was a little strange, I guess."

"How did you even know names like that as a child? I was only into comic-book heroes."

"My mother was an archaeologist, or would have been. Our house was lled with Egyptian antiques from my father and souvenirs from my mother's student excavation days: painted papyrus, pottery shards, even little statues of the gods she bought in the souq."

"Why did she quit? What happened?"

"I happened. In those days you couldn't have a baby and a career.

Maybe she planned to go back later, but there was no later, only the car crash." She brooded for a moment.

"I wanted to keep my mother's statues with me at the boarding school where I was sent, but the nuns wouldn't let me. You know.

Idolatry. So I kept them in my head."

"Poor Valerie." He caressed her hand.

She smiled and ran her hand lightly along the wood of the temporary casket between them. "Can you imagine what it must have * 155 *

been like?"

"Imagine what?" Derek leaned his head back over the side of the truck, trying to catch some of the wind.

"Rekemheb's entombment." She closed her eyes. "The droning of the priests chanting their spells, the smell of the oil burning in the lamps all along the way, the sound of the cof n as it would have been dragged down the ramp: shish...shish....shish. Pharaoh himself might have entered the tomb to offer the precious objects to the gods." She leaned her cheek back on her hand, feeling the faint soreness and the new scab.

"I would give a lot to have been one of the offering bearers, kneeling at the bottom of the ramp, my head on the ground as the gold-sandaled foot of Pharaoh stepped past me."

"You are such a romantic, Valerie Foret," he murmured, drowsing again.

"Yes, I suppose you're right. A romantic scientist. It's an oxymoron, isn't it?" She slid another folded mat under her bottom. Sleep was perhaps the best way after all to endure the heat. She laid her head down on her forearm and felt consciousness slowly swim away.

The bang woke them both instantly.

* 156 *

CHAPTER XXII:.

DESHERET.

The truck shuddered to a halt, and Valerie stood up to peer over the cab. The driver's door ew open, and Yussif jumped to the ground, wrapping a rag around his hand. He twisted open the latch on the truck hood and threw it open, recoiling from the blast of heat and the smell of scorched metal. "Kharah! " he swore into the smoking ruin that had been the engine.

Valerie and Derek leapt from the truck bed and came around to join him at the front. Derek winced and waved uselessly into the shimmering waves of heat. "The engine's damaged, isn't it?"

Yussif nodded bleakly. "I put full of water this morning. I was so careful. Maybe oil leaked. I don't know. It was no warning. Kharah,"

he repeated softly.

Valerie fanned the air with her hat. "Yeah, oil leak will do it, all right. The rod gets loose and bangs around until it goes right through the cylinder."

"Yes. Perhaps." Yussif looked defeated.

Auset struggled out of the truck cab and lumbered toward the others. The four of them stood in a baleful semicircle around the yawning engine compartment fathoming the disaster. Yussif wrapped and unwrapped his hand with the rag.

"Well, come on!" Auset spoke with such abruptness they all looked up. "We can't just stand around in the sun feeling sorry for ourselves, and we can't sit on all that hot metal. We've got to make some shade.

Why don't you two men take down the truck canopy and set it up on the sand? Then we can do an inventory of the food and water we have left.

Come on, get a move on!"

* 157 *

Derek climbed back onto the truck bed and began to undo the ropes holding the canvas. He stopped suddenly and looked up. "Wait a minute. We're forgetting about Rekemheb!"

Auset returned with another bag of pomegranates. "I don't think we have to worry about him. He's already dead."

"No, I mean his Ba. He came for us at Al Amarna, remember?

Maybe he can y out and get help."

"You mean like Lassie?" Auset was inexplicably cheerful.

Valerie climbed up next to Derek on the truck and began to roll up the canvas roof. "Who would he take a message to? The police? And besides, wouldn't your cell phone be more ef cient?"

"Oh, right!" He snatched it out of his pocket and began dialing with this thumb. "Uh, except that it looks like the battery's dead. Damn!"

Auset shrugged. "Dead motor. Dead phone. So much for technology in the desert. But Valerie's right. Who do outlaws call when they need help, anyhow?"

"Well, maybe someone should try to walk to the last village. As opposed to staying here and dying of thirst, I mean. I'm willing to go.

What do you think, Yussif?"

The driver shook his head. "Too far for those feet." He glanced down at Derek's oxfords. "And not necessary. Trucks come. Sometimes military. Better to wait."

"Just sit here, huh? How long have we got food for?"

Auset opened and closed various grocery bags. "Two days, if we ration. There's water for drinking, but none for washing. Now let's stop wasting time."

Relieved to be occupied, the group unloaded the truck and dragged their little household up a nearby slope. Yussif dismantled the canopy poles and carried them up the incline as well. It took only a few minutes to dig four holes in the soft sand where he could insert them. Valerie carried over the canvas cover, and together they draped it over the poles, creating a serviceable bivouac.

Derek helped Auset get comfortable among her sacks of food and then settled in next to her. "If you all don't mind, I'll stay in the shade."

He rummaged in his pack. "I had one sunstroke already today. Doesn't the heat bother you, Yussif?"

"No, I am Arab, remember?" Standing in full sunlight, he unrolled a length of blue gauze longer than he was tall. "I always keep turban in * 158 *

truck." He wrapped the long swath around his head with sweeping hand motions, encircled his mouth with the last meter, and tucked the loose end into the folds in the top. Intense dark eyes peered out from between two layers of indigo cloth.

"My, don't you look erce! Myself, I'm going for something a little more...Old Kingdom. One of those pharaoh head-scarf things that Rekemheb told me about. From my other shirt." He held up his sewing kit. "He said it's called a nemes."

Valerie looked at the useless truck, which shimmered in the late afternoon heat, and listened to the others talk about fashion. Nothing, it seemed, could faze them. Derek had obviously forgotten his earlier fear-that people die out there. She had not.

v "Look at them down there, poking at the motor like surgeons." As the sun set and the sky drained of its harsh light, Derek leaned back on his elbow. "But that patient is dead, I'm afraid."

Auset leaned back as well, there being no more household to organize. "Yussif is like that. Responsible down to the bone. If he can't drive the truck back to my father, he will carry it, piece by piece." She watched the dark forms hunched over the engine cavity and the spot of light that ashed intermittently from Yussif's hand. "He's the most honorable man I've ever known."

"Ouch, that hurt. But I guess I deserved it." Derek chewed his lip.

"I'm sorry, Auset. I've gotten you into deep trouble. Twice. I'm the worst thing that's ever happened to you, aren't I?"

"Well, I did think that for a while, when I had to tell my parents I was pregnant. But then I remembered that night. It was so strange, like we were in a drunken haze...but we hadn't drunk anything!"

"Yeah. You're right. I was a little dizzy the whole time. I thought it was jet lag."

"No, it was something else that made us both a little crazy. Maybe Rekemheb's gods after all. I don't know. But I can feel the baby now, and that's all that's important." She took his hand and laid it on the side of her swelling. "This is your son, Derek."

He closed his eyes for a moment, then whispered, "This is the best of us, getting another chance." He pressed gently, and the swelling pressed back.

* 159 *

"Auset, I will support this child, from wherever I am. I swear it, on Rekemheb's gods and on mine. I will never let you down."

"I believe you, dear." She patted his hand and smiled wanly.

The metallic crash of the trunk hood falling into place caused the two of them to jump slightly and look below. Obviously defeated, Valerie and Yussif trudged up the slope through the transparent darkness.

"And speaking of Rekemheb..." Auset pointed toward the blue-green luminescence that wafted up behind them from the abandoned truck. "If I had seen that a week ago, I would have thought I was insane.

But now..."

Valerie and Yussif sat down, and the arriving Ka stood by them, his feet not quite touching the ground. After a moment, he sat down too.

He looked around at the faces that stared at him, and the expression on his face seemed to say, "What?"

"The 'roaring chariot' is useless," Valerie said to him in Egyptian.

"Any chance one of your gods can give us a little assistance? Food?

Firewood?"

The Ka shook his head. "The gods watch us everywhere, but they have no power or voice. Only in their temples can they reveal their wonder."

Valerie explained and Auset sighed. "What a pity. Here we are- Christian, Jew, Muslim, and scientist-all waiting to meet your gods.

If they can't dazzle us with a few miracles, they're not going to catch on." She tossed a dark pebble into the center of the circle. "People sort of expect that from a god."

Derek stretched out lengthwise, resting his head on his palm.

"Something I don't understand, Rekemheb. Egypt had so many gods.

How did you know which one to serve?"

"The gods come each in their season or their hour, but it was Hathor who chose me." He looked up to the dark sky. "I served her joyously, for she is Isis and the mother of Horus. She is music and the warmth of love, and in her wrath she is the lioness Sekhmet. She has many temperaments, and each temperament has a name."

Yussif bent and picked up the pebble that Auset had thrown down.

He twirled it between his ngers and rubbed it absentmindedly on his cheek. "The God of Islam also reveals himself in many ways. He is the Merciful, the Forgiving, the Almighty. But these are all One."

Rekemheb frowned. "Is this One-god also in the wind and sky, in birds and beasts, in sunlight and the moon?"

* 160 *

The Arab paused for a moment. "The pious man feels the presence of God everywhere. But always it is the One God, Allah, the Absolute.

He has no forms or face."

"It's kind of the same for Christians," Derek added. "At least that's what my preacher stepfather says. For most of us, He seems to wait outside of things, until we face Him after death. But it may be different for Catholics. Didn't you go to Catholic school, Val?"

Valerie grimaced. "Yes, L'ecole Sacre Coeur. But Sister Marie-Henriette pretty much ruined God for me. When someone says 'God's will,' I think of the punishment closet. I have never sensed God and never expect to," she grumbled.

The Ka said softly, "I will show you one right now." He raised his open hand over his head, as if offering something to the night sky.

All four heads looked up where he pointed. The air was unusually clear, Valerie noted, and the dense stars did seem to her drowsy eyes to cluster into distinct shapes stretching across the sky. Yes, she could de nitely see forms. Long arms reached down to the western horizon, and farther up, she noticed a roundness that could be taken for a head.

Directly overhead the stars were dense, and toward the east they seemed to bifurcate again. She looked along the shape several times, her eyes sweeping back and forth, and each time it seemed more to be looking back. A wave of infantile comfort came over her. She could see it now, the sheltering curve of gray light. "The Sky Goddess Nuut," she said out loud.

"Yes," Rekemheb af rmed. "Nuut, daughter of Shu, the air, mother of the Sun God Ra, whom she swallows each evening and gives birth to anew each morning."

"Wow," murmured Derek. "I can actually see it."

Yussif covered his eyes and murmured to himself, "'Consider Lat and Uzza, and Manat, the third, the exalted birds'...No!" His hand closed to a st. "I do not see it. I see only stars in the heaven which Allah has given to us."

"I have to agree with Yussif," Auset added. "I admit, it sort of has a human shape, but that's just me interpreting the random dots. I don't see any gods."

Valerie passed along the comments to the Ka, who shrugged. "You will see them soon enough, all of you."