Mysterious Cairo (7 page)

Cage was so lost in his thoughts that he didn't hear Clemeta approach from the other room. He wasn't aware of her until she gently laid her hands upon his shoulders. Where her long, slender fingers touched bare skin, he felt an electric charge. Her touch was warm, dusty, and he cherished it with all his heart.

"What are you thinking about, Angus?" Clemeta asked. She spoke his language extremely well. When he had asked about that, Payne explained that it had to do with the process used to bring her back to life.

"I was just studying our friend here," Cage began, unsure how to put his feelings into words. "If this is really who Payne claims he is, then this man is my mortal enemy — or at least he could become him. All that separates this man from Mobius is a few thousand years and a dimension or two. Who's to say that his heart isn't as evil as Mobius'?"

Clemeta began to knead the tense muscles in Cage's shoulders, relieving his concerns with every firm squeeze. "I know the heart of Sutenhotep as though it was my own," she offered while she continued his massage. "There is no evil within it, Angus. You will see that for yourself in five more days."

Cage stood and took Clemeta's hands in his own. They seemed small in his large grip, fragile. "How do you know the process will be finished by then?" he asked, looking into her eyes. He had lost his soul in similar eyes a lifetime ago. "How can you be so sure?"

She smiled at him. It was a dazzling, infectious smile. "After the eleventh jar was filled, I awoke," she said. "The same will be true for Sutenhotep. Each night, another jar fills with smoke. In five nights, Sutenhotep will live again."

Cage nodded and returned to his seat. She was so much like the Clemeta he had known — but she was also so different. She wasn't manipulative or demanding. And she wasn't quite as passionate. She was — the thought was lost when her hands again took their place upon his shoulders, kneaded away with his doubts and questions. With a contented sigh, he concentrated on the mummy.

"Where were we?" Cage asked Sutenhotep rhetorically. "Oh yes, I was telling you about the first time I met Dr. Mobius. I had tracked the missing capacitors to a warehouse on the East Side. Mobius was waiting for me to arrive, wearing his purple hood. He always wears his purple hood. He had set a trap for me, but I was one step ahead of him. You know, Mobius was different in those days. His crime sprees were more serious, more intense. He played every wacky plan and offbeat caper as a matter of life and death. He lost and won his share of contests, but he always tried his best. Later, around the same time he began to disappear for long periods of time, his attitude changed. His capers became games, and the Mystery Men were often nothing more than pawns. Funny, but in those days before he finally left Terra once and for all, I felt like he was playing with me, that at any time he could have said 'game over' and that would have been the end of it. He scared me in the end, because he acted like he had the power to destroy the world and everything in it if he ever got tired of the game."

Cage paused, thinking about what he had just said. He had never admitted it to himself before, but the changes he witnessed in Mobius did scare him. They scared him to death. He shook off the feeling, directing his attention back to Sutenhotep. The mummy waited silently, patiently, for Cage to continue.

"Anyway," Cage started, "Mobius had set a trap in the warehouse, and I was about to step into it when ..."

* * *

Later, when the day transformed into night, Angus Cage got up to stretch. He had talked all through the day, telling the mummy all about Mobius and his career of crime back on Terra. Cage looked around the stone chamber, illuminated as it always was by black candles. Sutenhotep was in his place of honor in this exhibit of glass and wax and stone, unmoving in his stone coffin. Still, Cage had the distinct impression that the man was listening to him when he spoke, soaking up his words like a plant soaks up sun and water. Clemeta was asleep in a chair, looking as beautiful in slumber as she did wide awake. His heart ached just looking at her, and he had to turn away. He needed some air, he decided. He needed to get out of the shop for a little while.

The black curtain separating the front room from the back hesitated a moment before parting to let Cage pass. When it finally opened, Cage heard voices coming from the other room. He listened before entering, trying to hear what was being said. One voice he recognized instantly — it belonged to Quentin Payne. The other was harsh, guttural, and totally unfamiliar.

"Everything is proceeding according to plan," Payne said. "Sutenhotep has his tutor. You may assure the Gaunt Man that he will have this realm before the year is out."

"The Gaunt Man does not want your assurances, Payne," the guttural voice protested. "He wants only your success. When he returns from his travels, I want to be able to tell him that you have succeeded and the madman called Mobius is no more."

"Of course, Parok," Payne said humbly. "I will not fail."

Cage took a slow step forward, edging into the large front room. He was at one end of the maze of displays, Payne was at the other. Beside Payne, hidden in the shadows of the doorway, was a huge form. Cage blinked, trying to clear his vision, for it seemed that the shadowy form had great bat wings folded across its chest.

"See that you don't, Payne," the one Payne called Parok warned, then it turned and stepped into the night.

Cage was about to make his presence known when a high-pitched squeal caused him to pause. The squeal came from the open doorway, and at the sound Payne smiled broadly.

"Ah, my children," Payne said, opening his arms to the night. "What have you brought me this evening?"

A puddle of darkness spilled into the shop, splashing around Payne's spit-polished shoes. As the darkness spread across the floor, it revealed its gift. Standing in the center of the darkness was a young woman with blond hair and blank eyes. More and more of her form was exposed as the darkness parted, dropping away from her like rain from a slicker.

"Very good choice, my children," Payne cooed, "very good."

Before Cage could decide on a course of action, he felt Clemeta's dusty touch on his arm. "She is only a customer, Angus," Clemeta said softly.

"But ." Cage began as Payne led the young woman toward the black curtain.

"A customer, nothing more," Clemeta repeated, taking Cage's hand and leading him deeper into the maze of displays.

After a time, he forgot all about the young woman, the creature with bat wings, and ambulant darkness. All he remembered was Clemeta—her touch, her look, her exotic scent.

* * *

On the morning of the eleventh day, the day of Sutenhotep's rebirth, Angus Cage emerged from
Oddities and Ends
to greet the dawn. No sun reached down into the tight alley, though. No heat burned off the constant, clinging mist. Even the shadows were present, seeming to watch his every move with eager hunger. He took a deep breath, but the stale, dead air refused to fill his lungs. Without a second thought, he started toward the end of the alley and the muffled hum of activity that sounded a world away.

At the end of the alley, Cage had to force his way through the swirling fog. It was thicker here, forming a wall between Payne's shop and the Cairo street. For a moment, he didn't think he was going to make it. Then, all at once, he was through. He emerged from the alley with an almost-audible plop, stepping from damp fog into hot morning air. Suddenly all the sounds of the busy city assaulted him. He had forgotten the comfort of the sounds, the heartbeat of the city that constantly reminded him that there was life everywhere. It had been much quieter in the alley and the shop, nearly silent. Like a tomb.

Cage drew in a great gulp of hot, polluted air. It smelled of gasoline and garbage and sweat, but to him it was as sweet and fragrant as a garden full of roses. It was alive, not dead like the air in Payne's shop, and it cleared his head.

"What have I been doing?" Cage asked himself. "How could I agree to help replace one Mobius with another? Better the Mobius I know than the Sutenhotep I don't."

"Ex-tra! Ex-tra! Read all about it!" a newspaper boy yelled in a carnival voice. "Another missing person! That sets the count at twenty-one!"

Twenty-one? Was that right? Then Cage remembered Clemeta — the new Clemeta —

Or was she the old Clemeta? Which ever, she wasn't his Clemeta, not really.

saying that after the eleven jars had been filled, she awoke. And Sutenhotep would too, after his eleventh jar was filled tonight. Eleven for Clemeta, and ten so far for Sutenhotep. That added up to twenty-one, didn't it?

"What are you thinking, Angus Cage?" Cage said aloud. "What are you accusing them of?"

The newspaper boy gave him a quizzical look. "Is something wrong, mister? Do you want a paper?"

Cage shook his head, tried to smile, then turned back toward the alley. Fog choked the entrance, but Cage didn't care. He reflexively reached to adjust his hat before remembering that he no longer had it. He frowned.

"Then I'll just have to get it back," he decided, and plunged back into the damp fog.

Memories were adrift in the alley fog. Like mental flotsam on a sea of recollections, past events swirled close to Cage, washed over him, then swirled away on a misty tide. Each memory splashed him with cold, sobering water before being dragged back into the churning fog. Though each recollection was almost too much to bear, Cage had no choice but to ride the storm and remember.

Memory ...

Cage, in the Great Chamber of the Royal Palace in Thebes, more than a year ago. The bounty hunter was playing a role, pretending to be a servant while trying to gather information about Mobius' activities on this alternate world. It was here, in the midst of a meeting between Mobius and his top advisors, that Cage first laid eyes on the woman called Clemeta.

"Serving boy," she called to him from her place beside the throne, "fetch me some more wine."

She was a stunning woman, with hair as dark as the night sky and skin like alabaster. She had an ever-present and always playful smile upon her full, red lips, but her dark eyes said that she liked her games as dangerous as they were exciting.

While he poured her wine, she let her fingers glide slowly across his hand. They traced a trail of pure electricity. When she finally took her hand from his, she left behind fingernail-lines of bright-red blood.

Images ...

Disjointed bits of memory assaulted him, making his mind reel ... Mobius talking about someone called the Gaunt Man ... Clemeta's fragrance, her scent on every breeze . jet-black hair hanging loose and needing no adornment save its natural luster . a loose-fitting dress that fell across her curves in a most-delicious manner .

And then there were her eyes! As dark and deep as pools of night, so inviting that he wanted to drown in them. It wasn't long before he did.

He remembered their night together, how he became a slave to her scent and her touch. He remembered falling in love with her, and though it pained him, he remembered gathering his will and asking her to help him.

"You have made me betray my Pharaoh's bed," Clemeta's voice called out from long ago. "Now you ask for another kind of betrayal. I will help you, Angus Cage. Then you will help me."

But the only thing he helped her to was an early grave. His presence in the palace had been discovered, and a squad of shocktroopers ambushed him in the Royal Library. Clemeta could have fled then, leaving him to his fate. Instead, she came to help him. That surprised him. It also made him weep.

Memory .

Cage and Clemeta before the Pharaoh Mobius. Cage was standing, guarded by the Pharaoh's own soldier-priests. Clemeta was strapped to a table, kept company by the High Priest Ahkemeses and an assortment of bubbling vials and sharp instruments.

There was an exchange of words between Cage and Mobius, but the substance refused to reveal itself. Instead, Cage remembered angry accusations—he called Mobius a criminal and a madman; Mobius called him a commoner. That was all that remained of the exchange in Cage's mind, three angry words: criminal, madman, commoner. But he remembered the final exchange between Clemeta and Mobius with such clarity that it blinded him. Even blinded, however, he had no choice but to see .

"No, my Pharaoh," Clemeta pleaded, "I did nothing to betray you! Angus Cage was nothing more than an amusement, an entertainment! Do not do this to me!"

"Dear Clemeta, do not lie to me," Mobius said soothingly. "You are very much like the Clemeta of my youth. She paraded her beauty, teasing me with it. But she betrayed my love! She claimed she could not love the man who murdered the heir to the throne of Egypt. But when I took the throne from Amat-Ra, I had both he and Clemeta mummified alive — and this Clemeta betrays me in order to carry on the tradition!"

The High Priest went about his arcane arts, inserting liquid-filled needles into the woman on the table. Cage recalled trying to break free, but he was held fast.

"Any last words, dear Clemeta?" Mobius asked as the arcane chemicals swam through her blood.

"I'll always love you," Clemeta responded, but the words were not directed at the Pharaoh. She was looking at Angus Cage when she said them, fixing him with her large, dark eyes. "Always ."

Then pain wracked her delicious body. Clemeta slowly died as her organs dried and withered inside her as the mummification process ran its course. Cage was forced to watch the entire spectacle, to contemplate his role in Clemeta's ghastly fate.