Order of the Air Omnibus: Books 1-3 (100 page)

"They must have put it into storage," a voice said, not loud, but not trying to hide, either. A shadow fell across the door.

Jerry held up his amulet, uplifted ears and pointed muzzle, protector of the dead and of the kingdom. A thousand years of worship gathered within it, focused by the symbol. "You who are on the mountain," he said, "you who are ruler of the bows, defender of the kingdom —"

The air shimmered between him and the door, and Iskinder lifted his amulet in turn, lending his strength and will. "Protect your own."

The door swung open and the shape took form in the same instant, gleaming black, the canine head on broad shoulders, hands lifted to display staff and flail. The man in the fedora fell back, mouth opening, and the Anubis shape surged forward, flail lashing out to bring the fedoraed man to his knees. Someone screamed a curse, and the shape swung its staff back-handed, driving the gunmen back again.

"Run!" That was the man with the flashlight, hauling the man in the fedora wobbling to his feet. "Run, damn it —"

The gunmen were ahead of him, pelting back up the hall, and the Anubis-shape pursued them, laying about it with flail and staff. Somewhere in the distance an alarm was sounding, but Jerry ignored it, focusing the power that flowed through and from the amulets, driving the thieves before him through the darkened halls.

And then he could no longer reach, the power fading. He released it, and caught at Iskinder's arm to steady himself. They clung together for a moment, and then Iskinder straightened, shaking his head. Jerry bent to pick up his cane. The alarm was still ringing, somewhere above him — somewhere in the galleries, only it wasn't the Museum alarm, sounded more like an alarm clock. It cut out abruptly, leaving a ringing silence. The thieves' wards were gone, shattered by Anubis's power.

"What the devil?" Iskinder said.

Jerry shook his head. He retrieved the amulets and laid them gently back in their place, pausing long enough to offer thanks before relocking the case. "I think we'd better go find out."

He switched on the hall lights, and went back to check his office. The box that had held Rosenthal's various smaller pieces was open, and he closed it quickly, then locked the door behind him.

"You're keeping it?" Iskinder asked.

Jerry nodded. "At least until Monday. After this — I need to talk to Hutcheson, see what he can do about getting this for the Met collection. I wasn't planning on telling him just yet, but —" He broke off as the door to the gallery stairs opened and one of the guards looked in.

"Dr. Ballard! Has anybody come this way?"

Jerry shook his head. "Not that I've seen." Iskinder gave him a look at that, but it was simpler to lie than to explain, particularly when there were occult forces involved. "What's going on?"

The guard relaxed. "Looks like nothing. Somebody left an alarm clock in Arms and Armor, scared the living daylights out of all of us. It doesn't look like anything's been touched, though, so — looks like maybe it was kids, some kind of prank. There were a crowd of them today."

"It's the kind of thing some people think is funny," Jerry agreed, and saw Iskinder's mouth twitch.

"Kids today," he murmured.

"Yeah, it's not that funny," the guard said. "Sorry, Doc, I don't mean to take it out on you. Anyway, I've got to check the Fifth Avenue door."

"We'll come with you, if you don't mind," Jerry said. "We were on our way out, and if you could let me out that side…." He looked down at his foot and the guard nodded, obviously not sorry for the company.

"Sure thing."

There was no sign of the thieves in the halls or side offices, and the staff door was, to all appearances, solidly locked. The guard let them out into the deepening dark, and they stood for a moment on the sidewalk, Jerry looking around carefully to be sure they weren't followed. There was no one in sight — and if he'd been chased by the shade of a long-vanished god, he wouldn't have stuck around either. He reached into his pocket, checking to be sure the medallion was still secure, and Iskinder shook his head.

"Whoever they were, they were taking a risk."

"They had it well planned," Jerry answered. "If we hadn't been there…." And why would anyone want to steal this particular medallion? Archeology could be a cut-throat business, but not usually literally so — and if someone wanted it as the key to the Soma, the sensible thing was to do what he'd planned, to bury it safely in a collection until an expedition could be arranged. "It doesn't make sense," he said.

"No." Iskinder lifted his hand to signal a taxi, but the cab drove past without stopping. "What are you going to do?"

"Talk to Hutcheson," Jerry said again. Another cab was cruising past, and he waved his cane. "And then I think I'm going to put some protection on it myself."

"I'll help, if you'd like."

"Thanks." The cab pulled into the curb, and Jerry limped toward it, Iskinder at his heels.

"But first," Iskinder said. "First we should have dinner."

"And a stiff drink," Jerry answered, and levered himself into the back seat. Maybe that would help him see what the thieves had been after.

I
t had been hard to wait for Monday, particularly with the medallion a constant weight on mind and pocket. Jerry paid off his cab at the corner of Fifth and 83rd and limped hastily across the street toward the staff entrance. It was a clear, cold day, the sun not quite reaching the bottom of the city canyons where the air still tasted of damp and iron, and he was glad to emerge into the sun on the broad pavement in front of the Museum. He signed himself in at the staff entrance, commiserating with the guard about pranks and kids who thought they could get away with anything, and crabbed his way down the stairs to the office level. On a Monday, the halls were bustling; he exchanged greetings with a dozen people, scholars, guards, the department's typewriter girl and a spare young woman in a plain brown jumper who was someone's assistant, before he was able to let himself into his office.

Nothing had been disturbed since Friday night — and nothing much had been disturbed then, just the box that held the smaller Rosenthal pieces. The thieves had definitely known what they were looking for, hadn't needed to search at all. And that was — still — worrying.

He hung hat and topcoat on the battered tree, and pulled the medallion from his pocket, unwrapping it to reveal Ptolemy Auletes' heavy profile. No different from a hundred others, except for the images on the reverse, and after a moment's hesitation, he slipped it back into his pocket. Hutcheson was probably in his office by now, and there was nothing to be gained now by delaying the conversation. He had wanted to keep it secret just a little longer, prove himself able again, but it was more important now that the medallion be protected.

Hutcheson's office was larger than most of the others, but no less cluttered, and the secretary ensconced in the alcove outside his door made it seem even smaller.

"Good morning, Miss Walters," Jerry said. "Is he in?"

"I'm here, Ballard." Hutcheson didn't move from his desk, just beckoned. "Will it take long?"

"I don't think so," Jerry answered, but he closed the door behind him.

Hutcheson lifted an eyebrow. "Is there a problem with Rosenthal's collection? Someone whispered in my ear that it might not all be as advertised."

"No, as far as I can tell, everything is genuine, and some of it's very nice," Jerry said. "And a few things are… interesting." He took the medallion out of his pocket and laid it on the desk.

Hutcheson took it, examined it, and handed it back, too polite to shrug. "I don't see it."

"Look at the reverse again," Jerry said.

"The Wonders of Alexandria," Hutcheson said. "And?" He stopped abruptly. "Oh."

Jerry nodded. "The Met needs to keep this. To bury it somewhere until an expedition can be funded — and I would really hope that I would be considered for it, Hutcheson."

"You're not a field man," Hutcheson said. "Not any more." His fingers curved possessively over the blurred surfaces.

"The dig would be in the city," Jerry said. "I'm doing fine here."

"Alexandria is not New York."

"Nor is it the Western Desert," Jerry said.

"No." Hutcheson looked down at the medallion again. "It will take time to put something together, and —this is why you didn't come down to the Cape this weekend."

Jerry nodded. "I didn't want to talk to Mockridge about Rosenthal's collection. I still don't."

"No, indeed," Hutcheson said. "If they get even a hint of this — what is it you want me to do, Ballard?"

"Buy the collection," Jerry said. "The ushabtis are worth it, and I would have recommended it anyway. Then bury the medallion until you can raise the money." For a moment, he wondered if he should say he suspected that Friday's prank was somehow connected, but decided against it. It would involve too much explanation, and all of it was the stuff of pulps, the sort of thing Mitch delighted in, not serious scholarship. Even if it was true.

"I can try," Hutcheson said. "Our budget isn't what it used to be." He turned the medallion over, frowning at the images of Alexandria's monuments. "I wrote to Herr Rosenthal last week to ask permission to photograph the collection for research purposes even if we weren't able to buy it. I haven't heard back, of course."

"Perhaps you could photograph this one," Jerry said. "Test the process."

Hutcheson gave a wry grin. "Not a bad idea."

"At least we'd have a record."

Hutcheson nodded. "You know I can't promise anything. But I'll do everything I can."

"I trust you," Jerry said, and held out his hand for the medallion.

He made his way back to his own office, closing the door carefully behind him. There was one more thing he could do, though he'd need Iskinder's help for it: cast a glamour on the medallion itself, so that it would be entirely inconspicuous, one more ordinary object among thousands of more interesting things. He wished there were more he could do — wished he believed that Hutcheson could do as much to help him as Hutcheson would like — but this was how the dice had fallen. He'd do what he could, and move on.

L
ewis dreamed, and in his dream a white hound stood beside him. She was long and lean, keen nosed and blue eyed, and when he knelt beside her, she leaned against his side and he felt his heart swell with love.

"What is it you want from me?" he asked quietly. "I will do what I can."

She stood up, walked a few paces, and waited for him.

"I'll come with you," Lewis said, and stepped to her side, one hand just touching the back of her neck as she stood at his knee, hunter and dog together as they stepped out into the night.

It seemed to Lewis that they walked for a few minutes through impenetrable darkness, though he was not afraid, her fur warm beneath his fingers, her pace steady and unflagging. Then the light began to change. It was not pitch black, but simply night. No, night waning toward morning, as though they walked eastward toward some place where it was nearly dawn. It was a cemetery. Shapes began to emerge out of the mist, marble slabs and obelisks, old-fashioned grave stones and mausoleums. It was a very elaborate cemetery.

The white hound threaded her way among the stones, past a statue of a warrior angel spearing a serpent, around a tall obelisk. She stopped, her nose pointing, quivering. Lewis knew, as clearly as if she'd said it: look.

Three men in workman's clothes were furtively approaching a grave before him, an elaborate one with a semi-circle of marble, with columns and carving and full Victorian frou-frou. From their dress and the tool boxes they carried one might have thought they were laborers on their way to work, but their way of moving betrayed them. They did not walk like workmen. They walked like the lords of the universe. It made their battered clothes seem nothing but bad costumes.

One of them set down his toolbox, and looked about one last time while the other two took up positions behind him, well placed to see if anyone approached. Anyone corporeal. They looked straight through Lewis and the hound.

We are safe, he thought. He knew it. Of course he was safe with her, and of course they could not touch her. He was here to see, and what she taught, he would learn.

The leader opened his toolbox and drew out a dagger, black handled, steel blade gleaming, some sort of device worked into the guard. Holding it high he began a series of invocations. Latin? Greek? Lewis wasn't certain, but he understood the clockwise tracing of a circle about the central grave, the pauses at each of the quarters.

The hound did not move. She waited, attentive.

"What are they doing?" Lewis asked her. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. "They shouldn't be doing that!"

Wine poured out in libation over the grave, and then the leader held the dagger high again, slicing his own left ring finger so that his living blood spattered out over the marble stone.

Lewis felt a chill run through him. "Are they doing what I think they're doing? Trying to summon the dead?"

The words were cold, commanding. The leader brought his hands together, dagger and blood at once, and it seemed to Lewis that a net rose up, a net of light reaching for the sky, pouring westward in a fine-spun column, rising like smoke, a net to catch a soul.

And then it dissipated. It collapsed into nothing.

The leader swayed, faint, and fell to his knees. One of the others rushed up, steadying him.

It was gone. Whatever it was, it was entirely gone, and nothing remained of its menace and malice except three men in dingy clothes in a cemetery in the hour before dawn.

The hound stepped back.

"What happened?" Lewis asked her. "I don't understand."

Her blue eyes looked into his, and he knew as if she'd spoken that he would. He must remember, and he must understand.

"I'll do my best," Lewis said, and bending to her he followed her home.

L
ewis was still asleep when Alma woke up at six thirty, unusual, but he'd flown them back from Albuquerque the day before, so she let him rest and put on her old velvet bathrobe and went downstairs to make coffee.