Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl (33 page)

“It certainly was for the previous owner.” Trigger chuckled. “But look at it this way, Mr. Bent . . . lightning rarely strikes the same place twice.”

The souk delighted Gideon. It was a warren of streets and alleys, covered with brightly colored tent awnings, every imaginable stall selling every imaginable thing. Gideon had never seen so many different faces: Greeks and Turks, Arabs and Africans, English and Europeans, all mixed and mingled together, jabbering at each other in their own languages, yet somehow still making themselves understood. He counted off the different peoples he knew only from
World Marvels & Wonders’
s breathless features on distant cities and exotic lands. Women in white muslin dresses and headscarves that showed only their eyes drifted past like ghosts; turbaned Hindoos with bare chests argued with corpulent Egyptians in tasseled fezzes; naked Fellaheen children ran between everyone’s legs; Coptic priests debated with each other and tugged their beards; Jewish traders ordered Nubian workers to pile this thing high, take that stock elsewhere. A brace of drunken English sailors, hanging on each other’s shoulders and dragging jugs of rum with them, sang unintelligibly as they wove through the bazaar. The scent of woodsmoke drifted lazily through the souk, and the smell of roasting meats caused Gideon’s mouth to water. Bladders of water hung like limbless pigs on a rope strung between two high walls, and a line of ancient men with rheumy eyes watched the group’s passage, sitting cross-legged on elaborate rugs and smoking water pipes.

“This is amazing,” said Gideon. He reveled in the noise and the smells, the foreign, exotic heat, and the hooded glances of veiled women. This was what he was born to do, adventure in far-flung corners of the world.

“I am dying for a piss,” announced Bent.

Trigger frowned at him. “Did you drink all your water?” Bent waved his empty canteen. “It’s hotter than Hades here, and twice as effing busy. I’ll never complain about the Tottenham Court Road again.”

“We’re here, anyway,” announced Cockayne. Between two stalls was a striped curtain covering a stone staircase. “Okoth’s.”

“Let me go first,” said Bent, elbowing past Gideon. “He’s got to have a toilet.”

Gideon followed him to the top of the stairs, where Bent pushed open a wooden door and popped his head around. “Okoth? Mr. Okoth?”

He gasped, and looking over his shoulder Gideon saw a mountain of a man, with skin so black it looked purple. He was clothed in a tentlike robe of shimmering blues and greens, and he bared white teeth in a grimace, his eyes wide. In the man’s giant hand was a huge hatchet glinting in the light. “Die, you astonishingly ugly bastard!” yelled the man, letting loose the hatchet. “Die!”

As the weapon hit home with a solid
thunk,
Bent made a liquid, strangled sound and slid down the doorframe to the floor at Gideon’s feet.

24
The Astonishing Mr. Okoth

As Gideon manhandled Bent into a chair, Okoth said, “Did I get him? Did he die?”

Trigger and Stoker had fumbled for their pistols, but Cockayne had bid them to belay the idea. The Yankee intercepted the cup of water Okoth offered to Gideon and threw it in Bent’s face.

Okoth strode across the room, which was spartanly furnished with a single chair, a desk, and a chart of the course of the Nile, to retrieve his hatchet. He broke into a wide smile. “I did! I did get him! Oh, come and look!”

Gideon followed the gigantic black man to the wall where the weapon was embedded; there was a fly, neatly bisected by the sharp blade, still twitching on the white plaster wall.

Okoth clapped his hands together. “Astonishing! I hate flies. Hate ’em! What do you think of that, an African who hates flies? Is it not astonishing?”

Gideon held out his hand. “Mr. Okoth. I am Gideon Smith, from England. We have come on an errand with which we hope you might help us.”

“Hang on,” shouted Bent, straightening his pith helmet. “Did he try to effing kill me or not?”

Okoth bounded over to Bent, his colorful robe flapping. “Kill you, honored guest? Oh, no. Not esteemed visitors from England, in the company of my good friend Mr. Louis Cockayne.”

Gideon had never seen a man of Okoth’s size move so swiftly, crossing the room and clapping the Yankee on both shoulders. “Mr. Cockayne! It is a very long time since I saw you last. How goes the slave trade? Brisk?” before turning to Gideon and, in a stage whisper behind his hand, hissing, “These Americans are astonishingly stupid. You must speak to them with simple words they can understand. They are like babies, or camels.”

Cockayne frowned and lit a cigarillo. He introduced them all one by one, and Okoth called into a back room for coffee. “My son, Mori, is in the other room.” He nudged Bent. “His name means
one who is born before the loan on the wife’s dowry is paid off,
” and doubled over with great, resounding laughter, smacking his knees. “My name means
born during rains,
which is astonishing given my sunny disposition, yes?” He straightened and considered the journalist with a cocked head. “Bent. Means crooked. Or . . . the man who likes other men. If that is your preference, Mr. Bent, I can have Mori make some inquiries in the souk. . . .”

Evidently flustered, Bent waved him away. “That’s Trigger’s bag, not mine. I’m a committed tit man.”

Okoth mimed hefting a pair of imaginary breasts and guffawed, winking at Gideon as a thin boy with a smattering of hair on his jawline, wearing a plain cotton shirt and trousers, emerged from the other room.

“Coffee!” announced Okoth. “Thank you, Mori.”

The boy nodded and smiled, stealing glances at Bathory and Fanshawe. Okoth shooed him away by flapping the hem of his robes at him. “Go! Stop leering! You think you are committed English tit man, like the esteemed Mr. Bent? Astonishing cheek, that boy.”

Cockayne sighed. “Okoth. We need information.”

Okoth sipped at his dark, sweet coffee. “Where are your boys, Mr. Cockayne? Out raping and plundering, putting babies in local girls, hmm?” He turned to Gideon. “Very raucous, Mr. Cockayne’s boys.”

“My crew’s dead,” said Cockayne, nodding at Bathory. “Thanks to her.”

Okoth inspected Bathory. “Ah. You are
obayifo,
am I correct, Countess?”

She inclined her head and smiled. Okoth said, “Vampire.”

Trigger raised an eyebrow. Okoth shrugged. “Many strange and astonishing things in Africa, Captain Trigger. And Okoth has seen them all! Now, information is required, yes?”

“Yes,” said Trigger. “Cockayne said you had seen John Reed when he traveled to Alexandria a year ago.”

Okoth sat down on one of the rickety chairs near his table. “Ah, John Reed. The great adventurer.” He shook his head. “Very sad.”

Gideon felt Trigger slump beside him, and he put out a supporting arm. Trigger said, “He’s . . . dead, then?”

Okoth gave a massive shrug of his shoulders. “Dead? Who can tell? And what is death, anyway? You know, the Egyptians believe in—”

“Stow the theology,” said Cockayne testily. “Is Reed dead, or not?”

Okoth placed his hands on his knees. “Well, all I can say is he went into the pyramid, and he never came out.”

“The pyramid?” said Gideon. “The lost Rhodopis Pyramid? He found it?”

Okoth laughed richly. “You English are astonishingly funny, Mr. Gideon Smith. You always think something is lost unless you find it yourselves.”

Gideon helped Trigger to a chair. He had grown suddenly old and feeble, much as he had first looked when he stood on his doorstep on Grosvenor Square. Trigger put his hand to his head. “I always thought . . . John always survived. No matter what happened, he always won out, at the end.”

“Did you actually see him die?” asked Gideon quietly.

“I did not,” said Okoth. “He went into the pyramid and did not come out. I waited for a day and a night, and returned every few days for a month, but there was no sign.”

“He could have survived,” said Gideon, though he sounded doubtful even to himself. “Perhaps he is still inside, or effected an escape while Mr. Okoth was not there.”

Trigger shook his head sadly. “If John had left the pyramid, why would he have not come home to me? He has fallen victim to the Children of Heqet, undoubtedly. And even if he did manage to survive those fiends . . . he would not have lasted long in the pyramid.”

“There might have been food,” said Gideon desperately.

Trigger’s voice dropped to a whisper. “John had . . . other hungers. He was no stranger to Limehouse, if you get my meaning.”

Gideon did not, and he looked up. Bent laid a hand on his shoulder. “I think Trigger means he was an opium addict.”

Trigger nodded sadly. “He would have died in a mindless frenzy without the drug, even before the hunger got him.”

Okoth leaned forward and said seriously, “I knew about Doctor Reed’s . . . requirements. I had to get Mori to procure something for him in the souk.” He rubbed his finger and thumb together. “Kef, from Morocco. Hashish.”

They stood silently in the hot, airless room for a moment, then Gideon said, “We cannot give up hope. Mr. Okoth, can you take us to the Rhodopis Pyramid?”

He broke out into a wide grin. “Astonishingly, I can do just that.” He frowned. “But wait. You said Heqet, did you not? The astonishingly ugly frog-faced goddess of these heathen Egyptians?”

Gideon glanced at Trigger. “We did, yes. You know of them? The Children of Heqet?”

“Astonishing commotion in the souk today,” said Okoth. “An Egyptian fisherman came running through, all of a fluster, claiming to have seen monsters in the river.”

“Monsters?” said Gideon.

“Monsters,” agreed Okoth. “Frog-faced monsters, he said, with cruel teeth. And more! Astonishing! They had a woman with them, an English woman, blond of hair and pale of skin! Under the water, but
her eyes were open
!”

Gideon gasped. “Maria!”

“When was this, Okoth?” said Cockayne.

Okoth shrugged. “Dawn, he said.”

“We’ve got to go after them!” said Gideon. “Mr. Cockayne . . . ?”

Cockayne shrugged. “OK. I’m interested. We can take the
Yellow Rose
upriver for a bit, if you like. But I ain’t putting myself in harm’s way for anyone, Pledge or no Pledge.”

“All pyramids are built to the west of the Nile,” Okoth said, when Alexandria was far behind them and lost to sight. He had directed Cockayne to follow the vast river until it was time to bank off into the desert. “For that is where the sun sets, and thus that way lies the land of the dead.”

“Are all pyramids tombs?” asked Gideon. He could not believe a people who lived in such rich sunlight and among such suffocating heat could be so obsessed with the cold darkness of death.

“Indeed,” nodded Okoth. “They were built to resemble Ben-ben, the mound that rose from the primordial waters of Nu, and on which the first rays of the sun fell.” He laughed. “Those Egyptians were astonishingly crazy. Everybody knows the world was created by Katonda, the big eye in the sky, the father of all the gods and the father of all living men.”

For a while Gideon watched the passage of the Nile below them, the land around it remarkably green and fertile. Gideon had thought Egypt a place of sand and little else. Vast tracts of land near the river were swollen and flooded, and he could make out lumpish gray shapes gathered in the shallows of the floodwaters. “What are those?”

“That is the hippopotamus!” Okoth grinned. “The big fat river horse.” He cocked his head and regarded Bent. “There is not an insignificant likeness to yourself, good sir.”

“Cheeky ass,” sniffed Bent as Gideon hid a smirk behind his hand. “What else have you got down there?”

“Birds with long curved bills, the ibises, very important in Egypt. The mongoose. Tortoises. The Nile Monitor, very nasty lizard, very strong jaws.” Okoth snapped his hands together in a sharp clap.

“Don’t like the sound of that much,” said Bent.

Okoth said, “Very temperamental creatures. But not as bad as the crocodiles.”

Bent stared at him. “Crocodiles? Running wild?”

“Oh yes,” said Okoth. “Wild and fast. Snap, snap, snap!” He collapsed into peals of laughter again.

Okoth tapped Gideon on the shoulder and pointed toward the river. “Now, isn’t that a most astonishingly curious sight?”