The Book of the Dead (12 page)

Slowly he turned his head.

A dozen feet away were four more wolves, and all of them were eyeing him.

El-Kafir el-Sheikh felt his lungs contract. His heart felt stiffer as it pumped, even as it began to gallop behind his ribs. He could not take his eyes from the four wolves. He heard a succession of ripping sounds, from the direction in which Suyuti lay. It was the noise of tearing flesh, audible even over the sound of the rain. But there was no space in his head to think about that.

His whole chest trembling with his accelerated heartbeat, el-Kafir el-Sheikh rotated his body, bringing his pistol around until it was aimed at the four other wolves. He was thinking:
how many bullets in this gun?
He was thinking:
how hungry are these wolves?

The four beasts stood, not snarling, barely even breathing; motionless in the curtaining rainfall. Can I scare them off with a gunshot? el-Kafir el-Sheikh asked himself. The rain would not help; it would muffle much of the bang. Still: what else could he do?

He pointed the gun at one wolf. The beast’s coat was a light-grey streaked with black; its doggish eyes yellow as honey. El-Kafir el-Sheikh’s fingers refused to close on the trigger. He was frozen. “Are you hypnotising me, old wolf?” he said, his voice croaky. The rain was slapping the top of his head, and water running into his eyes. Words came to him, he wasn’t sure from where. “Your turn now,” he said. “My turn later.”

He fired.

The wolf made no sound; but it flinched back, its rear legs folding up. Then the creature fell over to the side. El-Kafir el-Sheikh pulled the trigger again, but nothing happened. He wasn’t thinking straight. He recocked the gun – a wolf was in mid-air, hanging right in front of him. El-Kafir el-Sheikh didn’t even have time to yell out in fear. It was as if the lines of rain were silver cords, suspending the bulky animal right there. He yanked the trigger, more on reflex than anything. The gun discharged a second time. The bullet went down the wolf’s throat, but its leap had enough momentum to carry it on. It collided with el-Kafir el-Sheikh, all wet pelt and seven-foot-long muscular body, more than enough to bowl him completely over. El-Kafir el-Sheikh rolled, came up on his knees, overbalanced and got up again. His heart was yammering and yammering. The wolf that had taken Suyuti had looked up in the middle of its feast. Of the other two, one was disappearing away, loping off between the trees. But one remained, its hunger more pressing than its fear. It lowered its head, keeping its yellow eyes on its prey.

El-Kafir el-Sheikh got to his feet and held out his arm. Two from two shots was lucky, but perhaps the gods of Jutland were favouring him; and there was nothing he could do except try again. But he was shaking now, shaking with both cold and fear.

He aimed as best he could and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

He looked at the gun. It had been beneath him when he rolled in the muddy turf. A chunk of brown earth had been packed into the barrel, and the firing pin was clogged with dirt. He looked up at the wolf, and back at the gun. With shivering fingers he tried to pick away some of the muddy matter, but it didn’t seem to want to come out of the weapon.
Suyuti had a pistol too
, he thought. But Suyuti’s was underneath a feeding wolf.

He tried to remember what he knew about wolves. His nurse had read him fairy stories when he was a child, and many of those had been set in faraway forests filled with ogres and wolves. Could they climb trees? He felt the answer was yes; but then he found himself thinking – or was that bears?

The beast in front of him put out a paw and took a step in his direction, testing the ground, waiting for the pistol’s report. El-Kafir el-Sheikh held out the useless gun. “Back off,” he called. “Shoo away.”

The wolf took another step, closer still.

El-Kafir el-Sheikh could feel his resolve beginning to give way. He would crack, and turn, and run; and then the wolf would be on him in moments. He could not outrun it, he knew that. But his heart was going so hard and fast it felt like it would burst inside him.

He chucked the gun at the muzzle of the beast, and heard, or thought he heard, over the sound of the rain, a yelp of pain. But he wasn’t looking; he had turned and was sprinting away, a sort of struggling gallop over the soggy ground. “I don’t want to die,” he gasped. “Not to
die
– ” A forked tree loomed out of the falling water, and he scrabbled up the shallower of the two trunks, up to a bough. But when he looked back he saw that the wolf was following him. It leapt half way up the angled trunk, claws digging into the bark.

El-Kafir el-Sheikh yelled, scrabbled along a bough and was pitched off when the branch broke. The ground below was ferny, but he fell hard onto his shoulder. A bolt of pain shot down his left arm. When he got himself upright again it hung at his side. Every fibre of his being was desperate to run, to get away. He took three steps, got his feet tangled in something in the undergrowth and went down again. Up again, breathing hard and heavy, he ran a dozen broad strides. Looking behind him he saw the wolf disentangling itself from the tree, and leaping down in an insolently easy motion. It came trotting after him.

El-Kafir el-Sheikh ran on, looking back over his shoulder. He turned to face front again, but the tree was right there – he could not avoid the collision. He didn’t even have time to bring his hand up; he just ran smack into the trunk, recoiled and fell back, his face stinging.

He got somehow to his feet, blinded and stunned. With his right hand he wiped water from his face. The wolf was standing directly in front of him, snarling, his teeth like rows of sharp horns in a mouth long as a canoe. This was it: death. But nothing happened. Only then, gasping and agonized by anticipation, did el-Kafir el-Sheikh look to his left.

The Tollund mummy was standing there: large as life and twice as ugly. Water ran down his dark brown leathery skin, and his withered skeletal arms moved in slow circle. There was nobody holding him up. However this magic trick was being performed, it was not obvious. El-Kafir el-Sheikh took a step, unable to stop himself recoiling. But looking back at the wolf he could see the beast’s attentions had been distracted by this apparition. The beast began snarling.

The rainfall was dying away.

The wolf leapt and el-Kafir el-Sheikh shrieked, holding his right hand, the only one that worked, in front of his face. But the beast had jumped the mummy, not him. Through his fingers el-Kafir el-Sheikh saw the dead man hold out a dark brown arm – saw the wolf’s jaws snap on it – saw the hand come clean away. When the wolf landed and it was holding the mummy’s hand in its mouth.

The rain had stopped. There was only the sound of water dripping from the trees all around, and the panting of the wolf. It wasn’t the wolf panting; it was el-Kafir el-Sheikh himself. Gasping, gasping. A strange clarity possessed the air. The Tollund mummy stood there, so vividly present it seemed almost to pass beyond real into some dreamlike state beyond it.

The wolf coughed. It spat the mummified hand from his jaws, and it put its long snout down and it coughed again. It placed a paw over the top of its nose, a peculiar, strangely human gesture. Then it barked, or coughed, and leapt backwards. Red fluid gushed copiously from its open mouth. It danced and gambolled. Its grey fur darkened, and a black ooze slicked through its covering of hair. In moments it lay dead on its side.

Breathing in, and out. The sound of el-Kafir el-Sheikh breathing in and out, like surf; and the drips and drips of water from the wet trees.

The mummy was looking at him.

“To touch you is poison,” el-Kafir el-Sheikh told the mummy. Sunlight, swept by the broom-end of a retreating cloud somewhere far above them, rolled through the trees. The water on the mummy’s skin gleamed like jewels.

“Yes,” the creature replied. “I regret to say.” Its voice was creaky but strong. It spoke Masri with a thick northerner accent; but el-Kafir el-Sheikh could understand it perfectly well.

“You killed the boy,” el-Kafir el-Sheikh said. “And Bille. And poor old Gurbati! And now you will kill me!”

“I will not,” said the mummy. “Attend! Here is a word. Nanomachine.”

How el-Kafir el-Sheikh’s left shoulder hurt! He breathed, breathed. “I have never heard such a word,” he said.

“Of course not. But you must learn it.”

“What does it mean?”

“It means,” said the Mummy, “the means by which I am animated. We are sorry about your friends. It seems that the nanomachines have been altered by their passage. Many things are not as we expected them to be! I believe the alteration in the nanomachines to be a form of friction, although of a temporal rather than a physical nature.”

“You are talking some sort of gibberish,” said el-Kafir el-Sheikh, taking a step back. A twinge of pain ran along his limp left arm.

“
You
are a scientist!” the mummy called, in a great, dour voice. “
You
must understand!”

“I am a specialist in old northern languages, and runes,” el-Kafir el-Sheikh returned, in a quivery voice.

“Do not run!” commanded the mummy, holding out both its arms. The left had no hand, and the severed bone-end looked like a chopped through wooden stick. “It is all science. It is not magic.”

El-Kafir el-Sheikh took another step back.

“I am animated by nanomachines. There are millions of these machines, but they are miniature in dimension, and you may not see them, except perhaps with powerful magnification devices. They have been fed backwards through time; for time-backwards is a road machines may travel where human beings may not.”

“Gibberish!” exclaimed el-Kafir el-Sheikh.

“It is hard for us, where we are, to monitor. We did not expect the nanomachines to have the effect they have had, when they entered living flesh. In our time, it is possible for the nanomachines to enter a body without harming that person; and then the person might speak, or write, or pass on our message to others, as the machines might prompt them. That is all we intended, we swear! We seek only to communicate with your time!”

“Communicate?” scoffed el-Kafir el-Sheikh. He took a third step backwards.

The mummy stumbled towards him. “The passage is one hundred and sixty nine years, and that passage appears to have energised the nanomachines in unpredictable ways. They are too energetic for ordinary metabolisms to contain. We attempted, at first, to situate the nanomachines in likely subjects, but their bodies disintegrated as soon as the nanomachines were inserted into them.”

“Nonomachine,” said el-Kafir el-Sheikh. “No-no.”

“The nanomachines ran wild, passing from membrane to membrane, and we are sorry that some people died. So we have tried again, with a second batch. But they are just as bad. It is imperative we communicate with your people, in 1912. The disaster may still be averted, if we can only communicate!”

“You have the year wrong, my friend,” said el-Kafir el-Sheikh.

“The world is not as we expected it!” the Mummy screeched. “The past is not as we expected it! The timelines are contaminated! We intended to alter the timeline only from 1913
onwards
, but we discover the world has already been altered at an earlier point!” The stretched skin over the mummy’s jaw was starting to tear, and the jaw to hang lower. With weird detachment el-Kafir el-Sheikh thought: if it keeps talking, its jaw will simply fall off. “We do not know why,” the mummy was saying, “or how – unless our attempts to alter the timeline has set up resonances that reached
backwards
as well as forwards from the point you presently inhabit! We sent a second batch of nanomachines. This body,” and the Mummy slapped its own chest with the stump of its left arm. “
This
body is able to withstand the insertion of the nanomachines, and they are able to bond together to animate it. Its skin is tough enough, its metabolism is already dead and cannot be made deader. But the nanomachines malfunction! In a living machine they malfunction. It is the friction of temporal passage! They have become hyper-energised. They spread, like a disease, from membrane to membrane. To touch me is to absorb them, and they react in living flesh with catastrophic suddenness. This body,” and,
thump
, again on the chest, “is tougher, because it is dead and leathern. But you must not touch me.”

“I intend not to,” sobbed el-Kafir el-Sheikh. “Truly, I intend not to.”

“You must listen. We meant no harm to your fellows. But you
must
listen! We must somehow undo the damage we have done!”

“Poor Gurbati!” el-Kafir el-Sheikh said. “I was at university with him, you know!”

“The automobile is another machine-system, just as a human body is a machine-system. The contagion passes from organic to inorganic, and back. You understand that I am talking from the perspective of the nanomachines?”

“I understand nothing!” el-Kafir el-Sheikh snapped. He turned and ran – ran hard and long. Behind him the mummy was calling out, in its deadly voice. “Wait! Wait! We must communicate. Everything is wrong! You can carry our message, and save the future! But everything is wrong!” When he looked back, el-Kafir el-Sheikh could see the mummy stumbling after him; but slowly and awkwardly, and it was not hard – even with his useless, hurting arm – to outpace it. “Everything is wrong,” he gasped, as he ran. And on he went through the trees, not knowing the direction and not caring, so long only as it was away from the monstrous leathern form of death that staggered, slowly, after him.

“Yoo-hoo!”

Alessandro Tarabotti’s forehead crinkled under his grey top hat. Was that some peculiar birdsong?

“Yoo-hoo, Sandy!” No, it was a voice hallooing at
him
across the broiling humanity of the bazaar.

Mr. Tarabotti was so thoroughly distracted upon hearing such a name hollered at him in such a place and voice, that he relaxed his grip. The place was Luxor. The voice was just the kind that bled the inner ear, trumpeting out a nasal ode to abundant schooling and little attention toward the details of it. His loosened grip allowed the scrubby native boy with terrified fly-ridden eyes to rip himself away and scuttle down a convenient alleyway, vanishing round a pile of broken pottery.

“Well, that’s torn it.” Alessandro threw the scrap of material he was left holding onto the dirt street. He squinted into the alley, eyes adjusting slowly to the slatted light that crept through reed mats stretched far above. High houses and narrow streets – who would have thought Egypt a child of shadows and shade?

“Sandy, old chap!” The voice was getting closer.

“Who knows you here, sir?” asked Floote.

“More to the point, who would dare yoo-hoo at me?” Mr. Tarabotti turned away from the empty alleyway to glare at his valet as though the greeting were somehow Floote’s fault.

Floote pivoted and gestured softly with his right hand. His left was occupied holding onto a large glass specimen jar.

The yoo-hooer hove into sight. Alessandro winced. The man wore the most remarkably bright blue frock coat, double breasted, with brass buttons up the front. He sported a pair of Rumnook’s stained-glass binocular spectacles perched atop his tiny nose, and a limp cravat. In Mr. Tarabotti’s world, nothing excused a limp cravat, even the dead heat of Egypt at high noon.

“Do I know that repulsive-looking blighter?”

Floote twisted his mouth slightly to one side.

“Quite right, quite right. Someone from my early days. Before I cultivated a brain. School, perhaps?” Mr. Tarabotti awaited his fate, brushing a non-existent speck of dust from the sleeve of his own gold frock coat. Single breasted, mind you, with pearl buttons and a deceptively simple cut.

“Blasted English, blemishing about the world. Is nowhere safe?”

Floote, who was himself an Englishman, did not point out that Alessandro Tarabotti, of a similarly unfortunate over-education as the man approaching, dressed and spoke like an Englishman. He didn’t actually look like one, of course, boasting a long line of ancestors who had invested heavily in being dark, hook-nosed, and brooding.

Mr. Tarabotti continued grousing, right up until the yoo-hooer was in earshot. “I mean to say, Floote my man, what are your countrymen about these days? You’d think they’d leave at least one small corner of the planet to the rest of us. But no, here they are, shiny as all get up, ever expanding the Empire.”

“We have benefited considerably from integration of the supernatural.”

“Well it’s hell on the rest of us. Do stop it, will you?”

“Very good, sir.”

“You-hoo, you-hoo!” The man came to a wheezing halt before them, sounding like an exhausted steam engine, trailing some species of suitable young lady in his corpulent wake. “Sandy Dandy the Italian? By Jove, it is you! Fancy, fancy, fancy!”

Alessandro, who did
not
like the name Sandy Dandy the Italian, lifted his monocle and examined the man downwards through it.

The man said, to the monocle, “Baronet Percival Phinkerlington. How d’you do?”

At least he had the good grace to introduce himself. Mr. Tarabotti put down his eye piece pointedly.
Really, what a thing to do to one’s cravat.

“You knew my brother, I believe.”

The face above the unfortunate neck cloth did have a familiar something about the eyes and mouth. “Good lord, old Pink’s kid brother?”

The man grinned and doffed his top hat. “Right you are! Fancy I was a bit smaller back when you knew me last!”

“Practically half the man you are now.”

“You remember our sister?”

The lady in question went red under Mr. Tarabotti’s indifferent glance. He didn’t bother with the monocle. She bobbed a trembling curtsy. Ladies always caught the blush-and-flutters upon meeting Alessandro Tarabotti.

He bowed. “Miss Phinkerlington.”

“Leticia, you remember Sandy? Mr. Tarabotti, I should say. Italian chappy, went to Oxford with Eustace. Used to bowl for New College. Toddled down for a stopover one session break. The same time Daddy had himself that whole werewolf pack visiting.” He turned back to Mr. Tarabotti. “Fancy meeting you here. In Egypt of all places!”

“Indeed.” Alessandro tried to remember why he would bother visiting this man’s family. Had it been an assignment? Investigating the werewolves? Or had he been there to kill someone? Perhaps just a mild maiming?

Sir Percival leaned in conspiratorially. “You ought to see to your man there, Sandy. You realize, he’s got his arm ‘round a jam jar of dead cat?”

“Mmm, yes, preserved in some of my best formaldehyde.”

The baronet gave a nervous laugh. “Always were a bit peculiar, Sandy. Eustace seemed to like you well enough. I say, this may be Egypt, but trailing about dead cats – not the
done
thing.”

“I have an eccentric Aunt,” replied Mr. Tarabotti, as though that were explanation enough.

“Don’t we all, my dear fellow? Don’t we all?”

“It’s her cat. Or it
was
her cat, I should say.”

Miss Phinkerlington noticed the valet with the glass jar full of cat for the first time. She coloured a sandy sage and turned away, pretending interest in the bustling natives ebbing and flowing around them. A proper Englishwoman must find it a spectacle indeed, that tide of humanity in its multi-coloured robes, veiled or turbaned according to sex, loud and malodorous regardless.

“Floote,” Alessandro used Miss Phinkerlington’s discomfort as an excuse, “shove off, will you? Find out what happened to our young friend. I’ll see you back at the hotel.”

Floote nodded and disappeared across the bazaar, cat in hand.

Sir Percival seemed to take that as an end to the business. “Well, well, well, what a thing to see you here. Been a while, old chap. Came for the climate, myself. Wettest winter in donkey’s years, decided on a bit of a change. Thought Egypt might suit.”

“Imagine England having a wet winter, remarkable.”

“Yes, yes, well, Egypt, here, a bit, eh, warmer, you understand, than I was expecting. But we’ve been taking the aether regular-like. Haven’t we, Leticia? Keeps a body cool.” The baronet jerked his head up at the three large balloons hovering high above Luxor. They were tethered by long cords to a landing platform dockside. Well, that explained the man’s abysmal choice in eyewear. Tinted spectacles were recommended for high floating.

The baronet persisted in his social niceties. “And are you having an agreeable trip?”

“Can’t stand travel,” replied Mr. Tarabotti, “bad for the digestion and ruins one’s clothes.”

“Too true.” The baronet looked suitably sombre. “Too true.” Moving hurriedly on from a clearly distasteful topic, he asked, “Staying at Chumley’s Inn, are you, Sandy?”

Alessandro nodded. It was the only place to stay in Luxor. Alexandria and Cairo provided a number of respectable hotels, but Luxor was still provincial. For example, it boasted a mere three balloons, and only one with a propeller. It was a small village, really, in an almost forgotten place, of interest primarily to those with an eye towards treasure hunting. Which didn’t explain why Phinkerlington and his sister were in Luxor. Nor, of course, why Alessandro Tarabotti was.

“Catch a bite to eat later tonight, old man?”

Alessandro decided it was probably better for his image to be seen dining in the company of British tourists, than to be observed too frequently about his own private business. “Certainly. But now, I’m afraid, I must beg to be excused. My man, you understand, is gadding about Egypt with a dead cat.”

“Of course, of course.”

Mr. Tarabotti bowed to Miss Phinkerlington, who pinked once more at such direct attention. Not a bad looking chit, really.

As he walked away, he heard the baronet say, in tones of deep censure and insufficient softness, “Really, Leticia, an Italian is most inappropriate. You must stop blushing at him so significantly.”

***

Mr. Tarabotti found Floote exactly where Floote ought to be, at the centre of a milling whirl of dark limbs and bright fabric, engaged in a protracted bout of fisticuffs. It was unsurprising that Floote, who had fought werewolves in Scotland and vampires all along the French Riviera, was holding his own. What was surprising was that he did this while still clutching the jar.

Alessandro removed his jacket and laid it atop a low mud brick wall. He rested his hat carefully alongside. The jacket was tailored to perfection, flaring with just under enough fullness so as not to be thought dandified. It had three sets of invisible pockets in the lining, each housing a collection of sharp little sticks: silver, wood, and peppermint. The silver was for werewolves, the wood was for vampires, and the peppermint was for Mr. Tarabotti. Mr. Tarabotti was rather fond of peppermint. He was also fond of that jacket; it wouldn’t do for it to be harmed, and he wouldn’t need the weaponry, not in the middle of the day. He did transfer the letter of marque from the jacket to a waistcoat pocket next to his monocle and his miniature antikythera device, for extra security. Then he dove into the fray.

Alessandro was not burdened with Floote’s sentimental British predilection towards proper violent comportment. When Mr. Tarabotti fought, he used both his fists and his feet, drawing on some spate of skills he’d learned in the Orient. He would have been summarily thrown out of White’s, for his technique was, it must be admitted, most ungentlemanly.

He enjoyed himself immensely.

Mr. Tarabotti had always been fond of the occasional pugilistic endeavour, ever since he was a boy – revelling in that delicious slap and crush of flesh against flesh. He relished the heated blood buzzing through his brain, numbing all senses but those vital to security – sight and touch. Any pain was a boon, a reminder of watchfulness that he must keep his mind in play only so much as it did not hinder.

It was almost too easy. Floote’s attackers were ill prepared for Mr. Tarabotti’s sudden appearance. Soon enough, the swirling mix of appendages and colourful flowing robes resolved itself into three local malcontents: one fallen and two running away.

While Floote recovered his equanimity, Mr. Tarabotti sat astride the fallen man. He grabbed at the man’s arms, pressing them to the ground.

“Who hired you?” he asked in English.

No response.

He repeated himself in Italian.

The man only looked up at him, dark eyes wide. He writhed about in the dirt, shaking his head frantically back and forth as though in the throes of some fit. Then, before Floote could put down the cat and render assistance, the man surged up, shook Alessandro off, and dashed away.

When Floote would have gone after, his master stayed him with a touch.

“No advantage in following. We won’t extract any information from the likes of him – too frightened.”

“Of us?”

“Of whoever paid them to engage the foreigner brandishing a dead cat.”

“Hired by your contact, sir? Perhaps he changed his mind about notifying the government.”

“No, no, I think not. There is someone else in play. Or several someones. Deuced inconvenient. Not to mention, insulting. As if I would gad about town dressed like a manservant.”

He went to retrieve his jacket and hat.

“Who might be looking to stop you, sir?” Floote came over and straightened his master’s lapel, checking the fit of the shoulders for good measure.

“Much good that blasted cat has done us. I thought it would provide quite the excuse for visiting Egypt. Now it’s just making us easy to identify.” The cat had caused quite the flutter at customs. Officials were used to dead animals being transported out of Egypt, usually of the mummy variety, but not in. Luckily for Mr. Tarabotti’s aunt, gold worked regardless of country, and Mr. Tarabotti had the gold. The cat had served its purpose, until now. After all, why else would a rich Italian gentleman be travelling to Egypt during the high season of 1841?

“We must get rid of it, Floote.”

Floote shifted his grip on the jar. “Shall I leave it in the street, sir?”

“Good God, no. Aunt Archangelica would never forgive me. Find someone to fix it up as she demanded, and quickly.”

“Very good, sir.”

***

Sunset found Sir Percival Phinkerlington and Miss Phinkerlington awaiting Mr. Tarabotti’s presence at dinner in the hotel dining hall. Some crosses were meant to be borne during one’s lifetime, Alessandro supposed. He joined them with a tight little smile, and helped himself to a glass of the mostly empty bottle of wine.

“Sandy, evening!” the baronet squawked.

Miss Phinkerlington blushed and nodded.

“Good lord, man.” Mr. Tarabotti sipped the wine. It was cloyingly sweet. “Don’t you own any other neck wear?”

The pleasantries disposed of, Mr. Tarabotti settled back languidly in his chair, waiting for the first course of what, he had no doubt, would be an utterly unsatisfactory meal. “What happened to old Pink?” He was only half interested. “I thought he was due for the title, not you.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught someone watching him closely from a nearby table. He leaned his chair back on two legs, tilting his head about in an attitude of foppish boredom. The watcher was a military gentleman of some breed, stiff about the neck and long about the hair. The man noticed Mr. Tarabotti noticing him and returned to his food.

Baronet Phinkerlington frowned, troubled by the Italian’s bluntness. “You didn’t hear?”

“Married beneath his station, did he? Go into trade? Die?” Alessandro tut-tutted, and declined to remark that society gossip was not his focus during those few times he’d returned to England.

Miss Phinkerlington put a hand to her brother’s arm. “Don’t, Percy dear.”