The Breath of Suspension (14 page)

He made the gesture again. He seemed to be expecting a response, so I repeated his gesture back to him.

It was apparently a gesture reserved for the use of church officials of the rank of apostolic prothonotary and above, because his face turned red and his hands began to shake as he worked himself up into a towering rage. “I was warned of you, but I did not believe that such men could exist. Panderers, heretics, simoniacs, who would sell the Word of God—”

What was he talking about? “My lord Bishop, I assure you—”

“No! The Truth is not to be sold to the highest bidder. My men will take care of you.” He drew in a breath that, when expelled, would call a dozen priests and deacons down on my head, most likely to haul me off and throw me in chains.

“How dare you interfere with the business of a papal legate?” I said in a rage. The Bishop’s eyes went round, and he let his breath out without a call for assistance. Before he could consider the improbability of a papal legate, usually of the rank of cardinal and accompanied by a substantial entourage, showing up at his cathedral in the garb of a mendicant pilgrim, I forged on. “Our Pope, Gregory IX, has established a Court of the Inquisition to combat heresy. You, my dear Bishop, are obviously no common heretic, for you consort... with
demons.
” I let my voice grow hushed with doom and made the sign of the cross, as if unconsciously. He also crossed himself, shaking slightly, though this time with fear. I’d hit pay dirt. It was impossible to deal with a three-eyed four-foot-high black alien covered with diamonds and not suspect some demonic connection. The Bishop’s worries about the state of his own soul kept him from considering the flimsiness of my position. I had to move quickly, because I knew this situation could not last for very long.

“He... he is not a demon,” the Bishop said, finally. “He is a true Christian—”

“Let me be the judge of that! Where is he? Now!” I also let my voice take on an ominous Italian accent, useful for dealing with a French Bishop.

The Bishop paused, obviously unable to decide what to tell this supposed papal legate, who would certainly know nothing about wormholes and time travel.

“The place, my lord Bishop. And the century.” I laughed at his look of amazement. “Surely you do not believe yourself in possession of information unavailable to the Holy Mother Church? My, you are certainly a mass of doctrinal errors. The south of your country has been purged of the Albigensians. We destroyed Toulouse, and put the inhabitants to the sword. They were unwise. Perhaps it is now the turn of the north....” I was really getting to enjoy this. My Italian accent had become as thick as lasagna. The Bishop was white. “Tell me where he is! If I find him, I think I can forgive your excessive enthusiasm. If not, I will be forced to take... measures.”

He crossed himself slowly. “Akhetaten. The Horizon of the Sun God. In the year—”

“One thousand three hundred thirty-seven years before the birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ,” I said casually. “You are a wise man, my lord Bishop. I would suggest you not leave town.”

I almost ran from the cathedral, but instead forced myself to move at a stately walk, which was ridiculous because, dressed as I was in a filthy jerkin and tattered hose, I was a considerably less-than-dignified sight.

I had to move. I figured it wouldn’t be more than a couple of minutes before the Bishop figured out that he’d been had, and sent his men after me. Egypt, 1337
BCE
, one of the six wormholes from here. The trail was still warm.

❖

First, of course, I had to stop by back at Wardrobe, since jerkin and tights were inappropriate dress for New Kingdom Egypt. Wardrobe was—well, actually I’m not sure where it was. A nexus, the site of some unimaginable Hoontre orgy, where the wormholes tangled like spaghetti. Most of the nexus was in about 15,000
CE
. It was cold, nearing a glacial period, and shaggy oxen moved across the featureless land, wherever it was. Wardrobe was located in a massive outcropping of rock, about a hundred feet high. The tangle of wormholes generated some sort of temporal energy, and the nexus was static. Whenever I was there, it was the same time, late afternoon.

The rock was inhabited by Qerrarrquq, a being covered with bony plates, like a pangolin or an armadillo, about the size of a Volkswagen. He looked like the remains of some gigantic dinner party, and clattered when he moved. He was always there, a punishment of some sort I had gathered, though I didn’t know what for. A brother of his, or an accomplice, was likewise chained to Ayers Rock, another nexus in the Australian outback during the ninth century
CE
, where he was dealt with respectfully by the aborigines, who liked the fact that when they walked around him in the right way, they dreamed of other times.

I had visions at Qerrarrquq’s rock myself, of my life as the thin entering edge of a knife blade into the soft belly of eternity. My very existence felt like a wound there. It was just an image, but an incredibly strong one. I never stayed long.

“What-t-t, what-t-t,” Qerrarrquq rasped. The plates on his back erected and lay down in waves, clicking like cooling metal.

I stripped and tossed him my medieval clothes. “Egypt,” I said. “New Kingdom, Eighteenth Dynasty.”

“What-t-t classss?” he said.

“Middle class,” I said. “Of course.” He liked to play with me. His job must have been extremely dull. I wondered when his term was up.

He chortled, a sound like rusty plumbing. “No middle classsss in New Kingdom Ejjjypt. Anachronisssssm. Sssc-c-cribal perssson, you will be. Writer of hicroglyphssss. Not Mark-k-ksssissst-t-t classss at all.”

Qerrarrquq flowed across the ground into one of the entrances to the rock. I stood there naked and shivered. It was getting to be a habit. He soon returned, and tossed me a white linen kilt and a pair of sandals.

“Is this a scribal kilt?” I said. I put it on. It didn’t make me any warmer.

“Yessss. Finessst linen. Have fun.”

He always said that. I was never sure if he was joking.

❖

“When d’ye think somebody’s actually going to have his carcass shoved in here?”

“Never, Akhbet. Don’t be dumb. The only one crazy enough to want to spend eternity here is the Pharaoh himself.”

I crouched behind a rock and listened to the chink of the tomb carvers’ chisels and the drone of their talk as they did their work digging holes in the cliffside. Below me, built right up against the Nile and surrounded by an arc of cliffs, were the brown mud-brick houses and white stone temples of the city of Akhetaten, newly built here at the command of the religious fanatic Pharaoh, Akhenaten. Both he and the city were named after his deity, the Sun God Aten. That sun was now warming my back, and it was blessedly hot after the cold of Chartres.

“Then what are we doing here, Ebber? What is all this stuff?”

“How do I know? Are these little clay circles supposed to be sun disks or something? Pretty dull sun disks, if you ask me. And all these sewn-together pieces of papyrus, covered with scribbling. Looks like a lot of work. Ah, it’s all crazy, no matter what anyone tells you.”

“Quiet, Ebber! Someone might hear you.”

“So what? Who listens to us tomb workers, anyway? No one, that’s who. Particularly when the subject of wages comes up.”

“Will you shut up? That’s a worse subject than Aten, or his sun disks.”

“That’s your problem, Akhbet, did you know that? You worry too much.” Ebber raised his voice. “Hey, Nabek! Time to knock off.” During their discussion, the sound of chisels had never ceased.

The overseer, a fat man in a kilt, with an elaborate copper neckpiece, leaning on his staff of office, cocked his head at the sunlight that was rapidly leaving the valley to the mercy of the shadows of the cliffs. “Don’t get wise with me, Ebber,” he shouted back up. He walked over near the rock behind which I was hiding. I edged back into shadow. “Damn waste of time, these holes,” he muttered to himself. He raised his skirt and urinated on my rock. “All right!” he shouted in a basso-profundo official voice. “Work is done.”

Workers emerged from the dozens of excavated tombs in the cliff face and streamed toward the walled compound, halfway between the city and the cliffs, where the notoriously riot-prone tomb workers were compelled to live, my two garrulous friends among them. As soon as the area was safely deserted, I entered the tomb they had been working on. It was just investigative thoroughness, for Kinbarn was certainly down in the city somewhere, probably getting religious instruction from the Pharaoh Akhenaten himself, and playing with solid gold sun disks.

The tomb was cut deep into the rock, an outer court narrowing to a long hall, then opening out again. Akhbet and Ebber had been carving reliefs into the walls. I stumbled into the dark tomb, stubbing my toe twice. I’m not very good with sandals. With becoming grace, I finally succeeded in tripping and falling headlong. The stone floor was exactly as hard as I had expected, but the avalanche of books and other paraphernalia that buried me was an extra bonus. I struggled out from under, grabbed an armload, and hauled it outside, where there was still enough light for me to see what I had found.

The books were bound in calfskin. Egyptians, however, had scrolls, not books. Interesting. A few minutes’ concentration on the Arabic lettering inside, and I identified them as copies of the Koran. The writing was in ink of a dozen colors, ranging from deep violet to apricot. I’d also scooped up some disks of gray clay, likewise with Arabic lettering. I could see why Ebber had doubted that they were sun disks.

Things were getting more complicated. The Korans were strange enough, since the religion of Islam wasn’t going to exist for another two thousand years or so, but the clay disks were more specific, since they implied the Shiite sect of Islam. They were made from clay from the city of Karbala—where Husain, Ali’s son, was martyred—and devout Shias prayed toward Mecca with their foreheads on them. Useful to have around, if you were a Shiite, but somewhat wasted here, since Akhenaten was only just getting around to inventing monotheism. The tomb was packed with the things, certainly more than Kinbarn could ever use even if he pounded his forehead on the ground continuously.

Drug addicts often develop a tolerance, demanding more and more of their drug until it kills them. I tried to picture Kinbarn desperately acquiring ever more religious paraphernalia, until an avalanche of thousands of Torah scrolls or Tibetan prayer wheels fell on him and killed him. A charming thought, but most likely wrong. I filed the Korans and the disks away with the rest of the odd facts. That particular file was getting a bit overstuffed.

❖

Now it would seem that finding someone of Kinbarn’s description shouldn’t be too hard: “Lessee, he’s, say, about four feet high, pitch black, kind of shiny too, covered with diamonds, and has three eyes that look like giant fire opals and glow in the dark. Oh, and he smells like bitter almonds.”

“Gee, mister, I don’t know, we get all kinds in here. Any distinguishing marks or scars?” Easy, sure. Only anyone likely to have seen him was also likely, like my friend the Bishop, to be one of his, let us say,
suppliers.
Kneel down, son, first one’s free. And suppliers get a mite touchy when you try to mess with their customers. The Pharaoh of Upper and Lower Egypt was not someone to be trifled with, particularly where his religion was concerned. Most people acknowledged that he had something of a bee in his bonnet on that subject. I didn’t want to have my head hacked off because I had been a little too eager. There was nothing to be accomplished up at the tombs, however, so I prepared to start down toward the city.

I left my gear under a pile of rocks in a construction site on the outskirts of the city, since I couldn’t fit most of it into my linen kilt. I did take a length of thin, strong line, and an interesting knife with a blade that was as flexible as cloth until you pushed and twisted it right, when it became as rigid as steel. That would have to do me, I figured, and headed into the charming burg of Akhetaten.

The place had all the character of a typical American housing subdivision, without the lawns. Built fast, in an area where no one had ever before seen fit to live, the mud-brick houses had a resentful sullen sameness, like a shaven-headed bunch of draftees in their first week at boot camp. The officials who lived in them had been hauled here by Pharaonic order from the comforts of Thebes, the old capital. There were very few people on the streets, and those were obviously heading somewhere specific rather than strolling. I didn’t hear any music, or anyone laughing. Being subject to the religious obsessions of others tends to have a depressing effect.

I headed north through the city toward the great Temple of Aten, which I could see ahead, looming over the low mud-brick buildings. I dawdled a little, like a kid coming home from school with a bad report card, because I had absolutely no idea of what I would do when I got there. I finally got there. I still had no idea. I stared up at the white stone wall of the Temple complex and thought about the no doubt intricate maze of courts and halls and acolytes’ quarters and culs-de-sac inside, where I would instantly become instantly lost. I scuffed the dirt with my sandal and started to look over the dressed limestone blocks of the wall for a way to scale it.

“May we help you, sire?” a voice asked, just behind my right shoulder. I hadn’t heard any footsteps.

I turned, with what I hoped was a fair approximation of guileless curiosity, to see who was behind me. Three men, in linen kilts and headdresses, the shorter one, in front, with a band of gold around his biceps. Shorter meant only a little over six feet, the better part of a foot taller than I was. The two in back were actually big. All three had flat, unpleasant faces, kind of lumpy, with protruding lower lips. Goons. Put him in a three-piece Savile Row suit from Kilgore, French & Stansbury, put him in a linen kilt, it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference. A goon is still a goon. The fundamental things apply, as time goes by.

“Ah... yes,” I said. “I was looking for my dear pet viper Zeluthek-hemunum. He’s bitten the serving girl and gotten out again. She was a good serving girl, too. She looks terrible now, all swollen up and blue. That little darling likes to slither around the street, nipping people’s ankles. Silly thing. He bites too hard sometimes. Doesn’t mean to, but his poison is quite deadly. Have you gentlemen seen him?” I peered down into the dust around their feet, which led the back two nervously to do the same.