The Western Lands (26 page)

I am HIS and HIS is me. I am not an agent or a representative, to be abandoned when the going gets tough, or disowned by some Chief in a distant office. That is what HIS training achieved. The Ka of his assassins merged with HIS Ka. From that moment on, he is in as much danger, in fact exactly the same danger, as his assassins.

HIS realizes that his ill-fated attempt to become the Sultan's Vizier derived from a deep feeling of vulnerability. Some would call it cowardice. He desperately needed protection against his enemies, who hate him for what he is, but more virulently for what he could achieve. For HIS is the ultimate threat to their parasitic position. The voice of self-evident spiritual fact.

Hell is to fall into the hands of such enemies, and he had barely escaped.

Isolated in Egypt, without money and without followers, HIS's position is desperate. He can feel the hate all around him: snarling dogs and doormen, hostile officials and landlords. He walks by three old men sitting on a bench in front of a little café. They follow his passage with cold, hostile eyes. He walks on, feeling the hate like a palpable force, as a small stone thuds against his back.

He whirls around . . . a street urchin stands there with a dog's snarl on his face. The boy spits. The old men glare. No use to make an issue. He turns and walks rapidly away.

The heat is like an oven. He must find lodging with the last of his money. He has sent out some messages to followers, but he can't be sure whether they have arrived or when he can expect help, if ever.

He doesn't like the looks of the landlord, a beefy, bearded man with stale wine and onions on his breath. He agrees, however, to pay a week in advance.

"I will put the receipt under your door."

He doesn't like this either. A man's word should be enough. But he is too tired to look further.

A cubicle room with a lattice door for its only ventilation, a pallet on the floor, a stand with a pitcher of water and a basin, some wooden pegs in the wall. He splashes the warm, fetid water on his face, takes off his djellaba and hangs it on a peg. He lies down on the pallet in a loincloth and shirt, his knife in an ornate sheath at his belt, and falls immediately into a feverish sleep.

Someone is pounding on the door. He puts on his djellaba and opens the door. The landlord is standing there.

"What do you want?"

"What do I want?" the landlord sneers. "I want my money of course."

"But I have paid you for a week."

The landlord looks at him with cold insolence.

"You paid me nothing." A foreigner, the landlord thinks. From Lebanon or further east, probably a heretic as well. Such people have no business in Cairo. "If you don't get out of here, I will call the police. I don't think you want that, do you?"

HIS sees the situation. A red tide flows up his spine, stirring the hair on the back of his neck, and comes out his eyes in a flash of light. The landlord gasps and steps back as the knife hooks up under his ribs to the heart. He turns dough-white and his mouth opens and closes.

HIS quickly puts his knife into its sheath and drags the sagging body into the room and dumps it on the pallet. He searches the body and finds a purse of coins at the belt. He goes out and closes the door.

Down the stairs and out into the street, walking rapidly. Rounding a corner he almost collides with a woman. She opens her mouth to curse him, then closes it and shrinks away.

For the first time since his arrival in Egypt he feels free and whole as he slips along through the narrow, twisting streets, letting his legs carry him. There is only one answer for people like that.

It is evening, a slight breeze comes in from the river. He realizes that he is ravenously hungry. He has not eaten in two days. He comes to a little restaurant with a bench along the side. Cauldrons of stew are bubbling over a charcoal fire and a basket of fresh bread is on a table with bowls.

"Come in."

The man has a rugged, ugly face. He is missing his front teeth, but his eyes and his smile are unmistakable as he ladles out a bowl of spicy lamb stew with chickpeas and hands HIS a loaf of flat brown bread still warm from the oven.

HIS quickly finishes the stew and asks for another bowl. When he has finished, the man brings out a kief pipe, lights it and passes it to him.

"I have come a long way from the East," HIS says, choosing his words carefully. "They call me Ismail, among other names."

The proprietor extends his hand . . . one long and one short squeeze. "It is a name I honor." He brings two cups of mint tea and refills the pipe.

HIS tells him about the landlord. The man nods.

"I know this man. He was himself a foreigner, a Hittite. He was also a police informer. It is best that you leave Cairo at once."

Memphis: a tangle of piers and stalls connected by catwalks, a reek of fish, river mud, sewage and
fellaheen
sweat. Eyes flick at him with a mudlike antagonism, cold and unfeeling as sidling scorpions. HIS is accompanied by the young boatman, Ali, a curly-haired youth with a sharp, fox face and wary street eyes. The boy gives off a faint smell of civet. He carries a heavy stick and there is a cane knife in a crocodile-skin sheath at his belt. 

Moving back from the river, they come to an area of walled villas with barred gates. As always, the dogs go mad at the sight and smell of HIS, leaping and biting at the gates. HIS finds this senseless hate unnerving because he knows the dogs
see
him, not just as any stranger or intruder, but as a threat to their lives, something basically undoglike. No food, no love, no home will ever come to a dog from this man or his followers.

They turn aside into an area of modest houses, traders, artisans, merchants, scribes, embalmers, magic men and witches.

Ali knocks loudly with his club on a green door with a heavy brass lock. The door opens and an old man, quite bald, with bright brown bird eyes, motions them inside. He closes and bolts the door and leads them to a room that opens onto a small, walled garden. The old man has the same fox face as Ali and the same civet smell.

"This man wants dog amulet," says Ali.

The old man smiles, showing toothless gums. "He has need of it. I could trace your path from the river. Well, there are amulets of course . . . but an amulet is only as good as its owner. It can help, like a weapon. There is the cat goddess Bast."

He points to a picture in lurid colors on the wall, showing Bast with a scythe, up to her knees in blood . . . a sea of blood to the sky.

"For every Goddess, there is also a God. Few know of the Cat God Kunuk, and he is stronger for being unknown. A known God, you see, has so many claims that it drains his power."

Kunuk is depicted as small—five feet in height—covered with fine silver fur, with eyes like opals. He carries a scythe and he is very adept at throwing it so that it severs a head and then returns to his hand. He is a juggler and can keep three sickles in the air.

This is a wild, free spirit, capricious, swept by icy passions. In the hands of a weak or timorous man his amulet is worse than useless, attracting attacks which Kunuk refuses to deal with. Too starved an argument for his sickle, or his terrible three-inch claws that can disembowel with one quick flick. Sometimes he beheads dogs and juggles the heads in remote transient markets.

His voice is sharp as his sickle. Few can hear it and fewer still can imitate it. No dog can endure the voice of Kunuk. It is like red-hot needles jabbed into his ears until blood flows from his nose and eyes. To a cat the voice is a delicate caress. They arch and whine and purr. The quickest approach to Kunuk is through his voice.

One wall is taken up by wooden cubbyholes with animal and snake skins, skulls, potions, bottles and jars and bundles of herbs. A purple-gray cat comes in from the garden and rubs against HIS leg.

The old man comes back with a silver box, three inches by five and an inch in depth. Inside the box is an intricate arrangement of copper, silver and gold wires in crisscross grids welded to the sides and the bottom of the box. He replaces the top. At one end of the top section is a grid of glyph-shaped slots cut through the box top. He holds up the box and a thin twang vibrates through the room.

HIS can feel it down into the bones, trembling like an oud string. His skull and teeth are humming, the sharp frequency like a probe of silver light.

"I think you have the answer to your dog problem . . . and now there is the question of my fee."

"Of course. But I would like to test the device. Not that I doubt your honesty, but it may not work for me."

"Certainly. Go out the gate and turn to your right. Follow the street until you see the mosque. The dog is called Cerberus. Cerberus will come without being called."

The boy stands up, but the old man raises his hand. "He must go alone. Otherwise it is not a true test. He must also leave his knife and his stick."

HIS feels waves of sick, cold fear.

"If you do not trust this box absolutely, the box is absolutely worthless."

With numb fingers, HIS puts his knife on the table. He takes a deep breath. The fear closes around his chest tighter and tighter. His head spins.

"Remember, the box will not fail you if you do not fail the box."

HIS steps through the gate into the noon street like a man going to execution, fighting his fear and losing with every step. He feels himself near collapse. There is no strength in his arm. Even if he had the knife, he knows he could not lift it from the scabbard. He can see himself bolt and run, shit and piss streaming down his thighs. He holds the box clutched to his pounding heart. He takes a deep breath and concentrates on the One Point, two inches below the navel. He has learned this, and many other secrets of combat, from a traveler from the Far East.

Stumbling, shambling, and there ahead is the blue dome of the mosque . . . an open gate . . . a low growl . . . a huge black dog. Its eyes light up with green fire at the sight of HIS. The hairs stand up on the animal's back as it slinks forward, muscles bunched for a deadly rush. HIS brings the box out and holds it toward the dog.

Now he can feel
ki
stream down his arm into the box, and he hears the words of his teacher: "When you need me, I will be there." HIS is suddenly calm. The fear lifts from him. The dog snarls and shrinks back, then comes in again. HIS pours his
ki
into a flash of silver light. The dog leaps back, howling in pain and rage. HIS pours in more power as the dog comes rushing back. This time the dog is jerked violently back, as if he had come to the end of an invisible chain. Blood pours from his nose and ears. Yipping, howling, he turns with a despairing snarl and runs back into the garden.

HIS feels a calm, floating dispersal melting into the sunshine and shadows of the street, the white walls and doorways. An old man comes to the gate and looks at HIS with malevolent suspicion. HIS holds out the box and the janitor shrinks back.

"Keep your gate closed and your dog chained."

The gate clicks shut. The man's face and the dog's snarl are fading in his mind like dream traces.

"Well, I am convinced." 

"So, now there is the matter of my fee. It is not money. Something much more valuable. My fee is the right to serve you."

Unlike other masters, HIS
becomes
his servant. If the servant loses and fails, HIS also loses and fails. So he does not accept servants lightly. In fact, he does not accept them at all. How can an extension of himself be a servant? One maintains distance with a servant. Here is a special closeness, an identity, in fact, that is the basis of the relationship.

The function of the Guardian is to protect the child during the vulnerable period following the first death. It is a difficult, dangerous and thankless job. There are no excuses for failure, and no rewards for success. He combines a ruthless competence in carrying out his protective function with a deep tenderness for the child he guards.

The Guardian first comes into existence in the moment of conception, so he is
biologically
bound to his charge. Guardians tend to have a deep cuddle reflex. They cuddle skunks and raccoons and cats and lemurs and ...

"A musk ox on TV in deep snow and I wanted to embrace it because it is a noble animal with huge liquid black eyes, all covered with a thick fur."

There is no question of payment. The Guardian is distinct from the Khu. The Khu is eternal and leaves the body after death. The Khu does not take his chances in the Land of the Dead. Well-intentioned, but his commitment is limited.

The commitment of the Guardian is total. His position is almost the same as the Ka's, but not quite. You can say that the Ka is the Guardian's Control Officer. The Ka must contact the Big Picture if he is to perform effectively.

There are many professional guards in Waghdas, specializing in various areas of protection. One agency sells protection against the Thuggees. These devious operatives are stock agent-types: cold-eyed, with no commitment beyond personal advancement in a game universe.

Pick up any spy book:

When Peter walked into the office, the Chief smiled. Agents have been known to get frostbite from the Chiefs smile.

"Having trouble with the Jew boy?"

"He's a bit standoffish," said Peter noncommittally.

"Sure he is. We'll treat a kike like a Jew and a high-class professional Jew from Rutherford, New Jersey, like a kike. Tell him right out, 'You wanta get into a nice gentile Country Club?' We like
nice
Jews, with atom bombs and Jew jokes."

Peter could see the Chief as some cold-eyed old exterminator, deciding on the bait to poison a warehouse full of rats . . . a little molasses, a little tinned salmon and plenty of arsenic. Peter knew he was in the presence of greatness. He squirmed with the schmaltz of it and broke out fulsomely, "I'm just beginning to realize what a cold-hearted bastard you are!"

The Chief was pleased, but his voice was cool. "Well, that's one way of putting it. I call it staying on top of an op."