Channeling Cleopatra (26 page)

"Those, my friend, are your rules and your
ideas. I shall use my own. There will be no adjustments made to
allow the weaker or conquered personality to protest, to back
out."

"You may find you are literally driving
yourself crazy," Chimera cautioned. "Most people, when they wish to
have an heir, have a child. A child with your own genetic material
would probably be as certain to carry out your wishes as another
strong-willed individual reluctantly carrying your personality.
After all, a child carries the imprint of the parent, too."

"Many would say I am crazy now," Rasmussen
replied. "I tried having children, but it did not work out. None of
my women could bear me a son. You will take the sample now."

"Surely your own physician knows how to do
that?" Chimera asked. "Gathering a sample is an elementary
procedure."

"Indulge me," Rasmussen said.

The contessa twittered nervously at his
side, her expression a cross between adoration and anguished
loathing. So she had been at least partially telling Chimera the
truth. She had just neglected to mention the part where the blended
personality—that of Pandora Blades—had conquered, as Rasmussen
would say, the contessa's own less passionate and more
compassionate leanings.

"Very well, open your mouth," Chimera said,
and took a sample from the inside of Rasmussen's cheek.

"We brought the equipment acquired for the
contessa's pet technician, this girl here," he waved a deprecatory
hand toward Madelaine, who pretended to be huddling over her
computer instead of cowering over it, "to prepare the sample for
the blending," Rasmussen said. "You will please do that at
once."

Chimera studied the equipment and said,
"This is not adequate. We'll need equipment from our own
laboratory."

"Don't play games with me, Doctor,"
Rasmussen commanded. "I need your skill now, but when the woman in
the other room has awakened from her sleep, I can use her instead.
And in order to gain Cleopatra's knowledge from her, I need not
leave her body in good working order. Shall I maim her and kill
you, or do it in the reverse order?" The man's voice had been
controlled and level to begin with but now rose, as did his
color.

"Calm yourself," Chimera said, but Rasmussen
suddenly staggered. "My nitro, quickly," he commanded. One of the
guards, apparently keeper of the pills so Rasmussen didn't have to
ruin the line of his custom-made clothes, produced a bottle, opened
the cap, and shook out a pill. Rasmussen slipped it under his
tongue, but the pain continued to be so severe that his knees
buckled, and he had to be supported by his henchmen and the
doctor.

They eased him into a wheelchair and it,
followed by the monitor, the defibrillator, the respirator, and a
trolley full of medicines, were wheeled into his room. He was
rolled into bed beside Leda's still-sleeping body.

Eewww!
Leda and Cleopatra were well blended in their emphatic if
silent response to this.

"Remove her," the doctor said, pointing to
Leda's body.

Rasmussen, with a ghastly smile, shook his
head and rasped. "Cle-patra," he said, reaching one clawed blue and
white hand over to stroke her arm.

Oh, God, he just got us,
and he likes us so much he has to sleep with us like we were his
first BB gun or something!
Leda
said.

Rasmussen continued with a cough and a laugh
that sounded like plastic wrap being crushed into a ball. "Nothing
. . . wrong . . . with her my . . . surgeons . . . can't fix."

The doctor and a henchman removed
Rasmussen's shirt and revealed that he had an intravenous stint
already inserted in his arm. Into this, the doctor plunged a needle
from a syringe prefilled with some mysterious medication or the
other.

"Now," Rasmussen gasped to
Chimera, standing at a distance. "You will do as I say
now."
His color was
ghastly, bluish around the lips and fingertips. His breath came
with heavy huffs of exertion. The seams from his various plastic
surgeries stood out like the ones on the Frankenstein monster,
spoiling the illusion of youthful vigor and virility he had tried
to preserve.

Chimera looked more exasperated than
frightened, as if an attempt to caution a child against doing
something foolish had failed. Leda's friend lingered near the
doorway until the rapid erratic zigzags of the heart monitor showed
a relatively normal rhythm again, and Rasmussen grumbled something
as he was hooked up to IV fluids. Only then did Chimera return to
the laboratory.

The
ba
hovered, while Rasmussen's
breathing slowed.

Damn,
Leda said.
I
hate it when only the bad guys can afford good health
care.

But the Cleopatra
ba
was focused on Leda's
body and seemed filled with dismay at what she perceived.
I
see we have aged and
have no beauty to aid us in this life.

Hey, I was cute once. You never got to be
forty. What do you know about cellulite and gravity?

True, and the body is warm and lives. Better
than a mummy. Living flesh is moldable. When we have the measure of
our foes, we may finish our mutual task and awaken, and there will
be time to work with the body. Ointments and unguents, perfumes and
oils, healthful foods and exercise . . .

Oh great. An internal personal trainer.
Better than being sliced and diced by Rasmussen's plastic surgery
team, I suppose. Come on. Let's nail the bastards who killed
Daddy.

The
ba
surveyed the remainder of the
yacht. It was more the size of a cruise ship, to Leda's mind,
though a cruise ship outfitted with only the finest of materials:
teak decks, a heavy engine, state-of-the-art navigational
equipment, and a large crew.

When Cleopatra wondered why
she couldn't see the oars, the
ba
examined the gleaming engine room, where Leda
explained in some detail how modern ships operated.

In addition to the rooms they'd seen, there
was a small apartment for each of the crew members in the fo'c'sle.
A fully equipped kitchen and dining hall for the crew, with a
private dining room attached to Rasmussen's suite, an Olympic-sized
pool, and other recreational facilities (though no shuffleboard,
Leda was amused to note), with guest quarters nearly as luxurious
as Rasmussen's own.

The contessa had a suite to herself, and
while Rasmussen slept, she returned to it. She was attired now in
designer jeans and a long black sweater. Her ravaged face was
framed by large gold-coin earrings. In her suite, she flung herself
onto her sapphire-colored couch and looked as if she wished to cry.
Instead, after a few tortured moments, she arose and went to a
desk, where she opened a gold-engraved notebook and began to write
furiously.

The ship, meanwhile, continued cruising
toward Egypt.

* * *

When Gabriella and Wolfe arrived at the
hospital, they were told that it had been evacuated to the lobbies
of various public buildings, principally the library and the
museum, which had the most room. Gabriella quickly changed course
to the museum. There, the crowds of sick and injured were being
admitted and treated, while anxious family members camped in the
gardens and courtyards. The quake-damaged roads were clotted with
vehicles transporting patients and supplies.

Gabriella strode up to a harassed looking
woman with a clipboard, who greeted her gratefully, "Ah, Dr. Faruk,
as you see, we have a terrible calamity on our hands."

"We are here to help, Selima. You see, I
have brought along Dr. Wolfe, an important businessman and a friend
to the people of Egypt. He wishes to learn what will be needed to
help these patients and to restore the hospital. I know you are
terribly busy, and I must find my Aunt Naima, who I am told was
injured during the quake."

"I believe she is over by the entrance to
the ancient scrolls section, Dr. Faruk, but although I try to
assign spaces methodically, we are more crowded than I imagined
possible. Right now, our greatest need is food for these people and
their families."

Wolfe punched a number on his cell phone,
waking up one of his brokers, and after giving the man
instructions, handed the phone to Selima, telling her to apprise
the man of the hospital's food requirements, which would be
supplied from grocery wholesalers in Rome. Shipments of drugs had
already been sent to the hospital.

While Selima spoke, Wolfe began wandering
through the wounded, trying to form his own assessment of what was
needed.

The smell of unwashed bodies, blood,
putrescence, and excrement was strong, along with the heavy yeasty
female smell that vaguely embarrassed him. Some of the patients
tried to conceal their faces as he passed, and he pretended not to
notice them. Women in labor, women with tumors, women with dreadful
injuries, the ones who must have been in the collapse of the extra
wing.

A great long line wound around one wall, and
he wondered what it was for, until he saw that most of the people
going in were, after a time, returning looking relieved. Sanitary
facilities! Retrieving his phone from Selima, by now busy again
with new admissions and her clipboard, he punched in more numbers
and ordered portable toilets flown in from the Nucore supplier in
Rome. Then he ordered Nucore's own chief dispensary executive and
her staff to come to Alexandria at once. He felt ill equipped to
identify all of the needs these people must have by himself.

He spotted a familiar blond head bent over
an injured child, familiar hands expertly exploring the small body.
He stood beside his wife for several moments before she looked up
and saw him.

"Wilhelm!" she cried and then, in a much
different tone than he had ever heard from her, said in their
native tongue, "Good to see you, big boy, pull up a hemostat or a
syringe or something, and make yourself useful."

* * *

You're not going to go all
stupid on me just because your hubby's here, are you?
Duke asked as Gretchen tied off the last of nine
stitches in a child's lacerated wrist.

You have your concerns. I
have mine,
the doctor told him stiffly, but
aloud she asked, although she knew the answer already, "You have
been here long,
liebchen?”

"A few hours only. Dr. Faruk and I had some
unpleasantness with the police when we first arrived. How did you
come to be here? Did your hospital send a delegation?"

"No. But I knew the dam was
one of your projects and I wanted to help," Gretchen said simply,
and changed the subject. "This Dr. Faruk, she is a lady,
ja?”

Duke scrutinized Wolfe's handsome features
for some sign of evasion or duplicity but saw none. He looked a
little tired and as if he was trying not to show it. He seemed
unruffled by the tragedy around him, but his jaw was set in a
determined line, and his eyes continued to roam the room as they
spoke. Duke didn't think Wolfe missed much.

"Ja.
An excellent woman. You will like her, I think. Have you tried
to check into our flat at the Cecil yet? It is not available.
Gabriella has graciously extended to me the hospitality of her
home."

Duke spoke up, in Gretchen's voice, "And you
think this is a good idea?"

Gabriella had apparently been standing off
to one side for a second or two because she said, "Mr. Wolfe, we
are in desperate need of more intravenous fluids. Also blood."

"Very well," he said, but
before he made a note of it, he said, "
Liebchen
, this is Dr. Faruk;
Gabriella, my wife, Dr. Gretchen Wolfe."

Gabriella looked genuinely delighted to meet
Wolfe's wife, which puzzled both Duke and Gretchen. "How wonderful
that you have come to help, Doctor," she said. "Please, your
husband has already accepted the hospitality of my home in
Alexandria. It would be perfect if you would stay with us, too. My
auntie Yasmin studied medicine in Germany. She is over there, by
the fiction hall, you see? My cousins tell me she has been
volunteering at the women's hospital since before the wing
collapsed. You must meet her, really. It would be a great joy for
her to speak with you."

You gotta hand it to that
Gabriella. She is smooth,
Duke said as
Gretchen looked over at the woman bending over a figure concealed
behind a screen.
And she has more aunts and
cousins than anyone I ever met. Do you think these could be some of
the women she's hiding? The ones on the run from their own
countries?

It is possible,
Gretchen said.
I must tell
you, Duke, that I also am hearing of these outrages against women,
and I am more inclined to wish to help this girl than to bring her
to what passes for justice in such matters.

Why, Frau Wolfe, I
didn’t
know you had terrorist
tendencies!

Gretchen moved on to another patient,
Gabriella and Wolfe following her.

These atrocities they
encourage in the name of Allah,
Gretchen
said.
They are acts abhorrent to the good
God, not how things should be done.

Well, I'd be the last one
to want to do away with so-called immoral women,
Duke said.
Even if some of
their crimes don't sound to me like anything to get excited about.
But this particular lady terrorist got me killed, if you’ll
remember right, and sent what was left of me to you instead of
Cleopatra. You're still mad about that, right?