Lord of the Fantastic Stories Martin H Greenberg

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were wonderfully obstructed for the moment.
Goddess of love and motherhood, Grandfather s voice said. Get
loose, chooch, there s others to meet. Later for the hot stuff.
Jesse managed to mumble something reassuring and Hathor
reluctantly let him go. As she stepped back he realized she had horns. Not
just little ones, either, like the ones on the Devil in the old pictures. These
were big, curving horns like a buffalo s, white as ivory and tipped with little
gold balls.
A deeper voice said, Nasty bit of work, that access tunnel. We don t
like it either. But the main entrance shaft is sealed, and buried by sand as
well.
The speaker was another animal-faced figure, this one with the head
of a shaggy gray baboon atop a short, skinny human body. He looked a little
like Jesse s high school principal. I am Thoth, he added.
God of wisdom and knowledge, Grandfather ex-plained in Jesse s
left ear.
And this, Anpu said, waving a hand at a fourth indi-vidual, is Sobek.
Jesse would just as soon have missed meeting Sobek. From the
shoulders down he looked like a normal man though built like a pro
wrestler but above that grinned the head of a crocodile. The long jaws
opened, revealing rows of sharp teeth, and a voice like rusty iron said, Yo.
I still don t get what he does, Grandfather admitted. Got a feeling I
don t want to know.
Sorry we can t offer refreshments, Anpu apologized. We didn t
come prepared for social occasions.
Excuse me, Jesse said, but where did you all learn English?
Your grandfather taught us, Thoth replied. This af-ternoon, in fact.
That fast? Talk about quick studies.
Of course, Thoth said stiffly. Simple brain-scan. I mean, we are
gods.
Yeah, Grandfather s voice said, but I tried first to teach them
Cherokee and they couldn t get it worth a damn.
Jesse looked around the chamber. It was larger than the ones the
Arabs had been using, and finer. The ceiling was cut in an arching vault
shape, and the pictures on the wall had been carved in low relief as well as
painted. Nice place, he remarked politely. Somebody loot this one too? I
don t see any mummies.
As a matter of fact, Thoth said, this tomb was never used. It was
built for the last commander of this outpost, a nobleman named
Neferhotep
He screwed up bad back in Thebes, Sobek croaked, and Pharaoh
sent him to this shit-hole.
who was killed, Thoth went on, glaring at Sobek, in a clash with
Libyan raiders. His body was never re-covered. Soon afterward the outpost
was abandoned.
So what are you, uh, gods doing here now? Jesse was trying not to
stare at Hathor. That gown was so thin you could see right through it, and
she wasn t wearing a damn thing underneath. For that matter none of the
neterw had exactly overdressed; the others wore only short skirts and
assorted jewelry.
A mistake, Anpu said. Strange business. You see, the dead man,
the one you buried today, happened to be a very distant but direct
descendant of the Pharaoh Ramses the Great. Though of course it s
unlikely he knew it.
The death of one of royal blood, Thoth said, so near an unused
tomb, somehow resulted in a false reading in the House of the Dead.
Osiris stepped on his dick, Sobek growled. Old Green-Face is
losing it.
Even Osiris, Anpu protested, could hardly have predicted such an
improbable coincidence.
Oh, I don t know. Thoth looked thoughtful. Per-haps not such a
farfetched chance as it might seem
He produced a polished wooden box, bound in gold, about the size
and shape of an attach� case. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, he flipped
a jeweled catch and the box opened into two sections. The lower half,
which rested flat on his lap, contained a long ebony panel with rows of
carved ivory pegs. The upper section was entirely filled by a smooth
rectangle of some dark crystalline stone. Thoth tapped his fingertips over
the pegs and a row of hieroglyphics appeared on the surface of the crystal,
glow-ing with a faint greenish light.
Let s see, Thoth mused. Ramses the Second lived thirty-two
centuries ago. He had over one hundred known offspring by his various
wives. Now assuming an average number of progeny
At any rate, Hathor sighed, the four of us were sent, and here we [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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