The E. Hoffmann Price Fantasy & Science Fiction

by E. Hoffmann Price

  Higgins was embarrassed. His glance shifted, then he made a resolute effort to ignore Maatkara. Rowan was now certain that his orderly had seen the girl, yet he had to make sure. He demanded, “What didn’t you know, Higgins?”

  “Er—uh—that you weren’t—alone, sir. I came for the—canteen, sir. Water will be issued.”

  Maatkara came from the corner, and stood a little to one side of Rowan; but she addressed Higgins.

  The soldier gulped, and said, “What’s she saying, sir?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know. Have you seen anything else…er…anything unusual, I mean, along the line?”

  “Yes, sir. A good many people like—like this lady. And some odd looking men.”

  “Did you mention them to anyone?”

  “No, sir. It seemed—well, I wasn’t sure—I thought it was the heat. We were all looking, but no one else sounded off, so—”

  Rowan nodded. “But you’re sure I’m not alone?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’d swear to it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s all, Higgins.”

  As the soldier saluted and turned to the entrance, Maatkara called to him, and would have overtaken him. He halted, helplessly regarding the girl and the officer. Rowan repeated, “That’s all, Higgins.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Everything’s Crazy!

  The desert was now a howling darkness of hard driven sand. As long as the khamsin persisted, Rommel could not attack, so when Maatkara caught his arm, Rowan followed her into the gloom. He could not see, and when the contact wavered, he stumbled blindly.

  Her grip tightened; he hesitated, and groped with his foot. There was a step, sand-clogged, like the one which followed. Rowan feared for a moment that Maatkara had led him into an adjoining command post, and then he saw the misty glow, a bluish light which dimmed and strengthened in the depths below.

  Thin-faced men in robes and tall miters rose from carved benches aligned against the painted walls. One, unlike the others, wore a black cape and a tall Coptic hat. His beard was white, his eyes were deep-set –the only part of him which seemed alive, for he was little more than skin and bones. Rowan shrank from him, for he was more unreal than the phantoms which, seen so often in the madness of the khamsin, had become real to him.

  The old man advanced, shakily. No one helped him. All his strength was centered in his gleaming, deep-set eyes.

  He said, in English which for all its heavy accent was intelligible enough, “Captain Rowan, I could not face the khamsin, so I had to send Maatkara.”

  Rowan’s sigh was a shuddering sound. “Who are you and where am I, and what is all this?”

  The old man smiled reassuringly. “I am Senusert, a Copt, and supposedly a Christian. But the old faith has never died, and we have borrowed a faith to serve as a protection and a disguise.”

  A Copt—one of the original inhabitants of Egypt; one of those who had ruled the land long before the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs had come, wave after wave of conquest. Rowan demanded, “Even so, how is it I can see her and them? My orderly saw them. But no one else did.”

  Senusert carefully picked his way to a bench. The others ignored them, and seemed to be conferring in an undertone. Maatkara, however, stood by, as if uncertain whether to retire or to join the two.

  “They want you to help them. They are bewildered, terrified. Century after century, the khamsin has uncovered, then buried their everlasting homes, always leaving them secure. And now comes this war, the one and only war of all these ages which has violated the tombs of my ancestors. How old do you think I am?”

  Rowan groped for a guess. “Perhaps a hundred, perhaps a little more, I’d say more, except that—well, it’d just be improbable.”

  Senusert smiled. “I’m younger than you. Look now.”

  Rowan followed the gesture of the skinny hand. The men in miters had become very thin and tenuous and hazy, and then they winked out as candle flames expired. “They take my life and vital force so that they can become visible to some few of you. You alone could see—”

  “My orderly also saw. I thought I was crazy. But why—”

  “Your weariness, your misery, your exhaustion,” Senusert went on, “pierced the veil. Just as liquor or drugs do when they make you have what the doctors call hallucinations. One man could not furnish enough vital force to materialize these people so that everyone could see them. And you had to see. Otherwise, you could not believe.”

  Rowan mopped sand and sweat from his face. “I still can’t believe. I still don’t know why this is.”

  “We want you to advance. You must advance.”

  Rowan laughed crazily. “Tell Montgomery! Tell the VIII Army—Why pick on a captain? I’m not even a soldier, I’m a refrigeration factory specialist, and they put me in charge of combat troops, when I was to be an inspector in airplane production, some fool blundered, and here I am, and now you ask me to advance! Why—why should I advance, when there’s an entire army which retreats for lack of supplies?”

  “The general,” Senusert answered, “isn’t sensitive enough to see us. Few fighting men are. You’re not a fighting man, so you have the vision.”

  “But you’ve not answered me!”

  Maatkara came nearer and spoke in that strange tongue which had all the stateliness and resonance of Arabic, but which was nevertheless different. She pointed at Rowan as she spoke, and then Senusert said to the captain, “This is the further west—beyond this, our ancestors never went to bury the dead, where they could safely wait for the expiration of the 8000 year term before they regained their bodies and came to live on earth again. But those bombs—those shells—the earth shakes and shudders, and the destruction of mummies is such as no earthquake has ever equaled. Advance—advance—drive them back, so that those not already destroyed will have a chance to live when their turn comes.”

  Rowan’s laughter shook the vault. “They want me to push Rommel back! Oh, God, it’s as crazy as everything else!”

  Maatkara was near him now, but her touch was too light to be felt; he could hardly smell her perfume, and his fingers closed on emptiness. The bluish light wavered, and he was alone in a spinning roaring darkness.

  Silence finally awakened Rowan. The khamsin had ceased howling, and the sun blazed down into the mouth of the crypt. Rowan’s mouth was dust-dry. He sat up among shreds of mummy cloth and shards of plaster painted with hieroglyphics. One of the unbroken panels pictured a girl surrounded by servants.

  The girl was Maatkara.

  He scrambled up the stairs. He saw footprints; Senusert’s, beyond any doubt. The old man had left after the dying down of the hard wind, or else sand would have blotted his tracks.

  Then the earth shuddered. Rowan heard the crrrrrumppp of shells, the whine of diving planes, the roar and thunder of many tanks; anti-tank guns made their murderous whacking blasts, machine guns chattered and drummed all along the line.

  There was a general advance, or, a general retreat. It must be the latter, for only Rommel advanced, and only the VIII Army retreated. He bounded to the surface, and into the hell glare of the Libyan desert.

  Massed artillery was pounding, roaring, hammering, a hell of sound which had the impact of a physical blow.

  Tanks were coming up. Infantry came out of trenches, to follow the counterattack. Scarcely visible against the ferocity of the rising sun, he detected the moving dark blots in the east: Rommel was driving through the moment that the khamsin subsided enough to progress.

  But Rowan’s men were not advancing. They had no captain. Higgins came from cover, racing toward him. “I looked, sir,” he gasped. “I couldn’t find—”

  Rowan did his best. But that was not good enough. A field officer and a captain came riding up in a motorcycle with side car, and saw that an entire company had lagged.


  The major said, “Captain Rowan, report to the rear.” Then, to the other officer, “Take over his command.”

  But an ambulance carried Rowan to the rear.

  He knew that his absence had not hurt the day’s evil prospect, for the counterattack had crumpled; it had fallen back to the original line, and only artillery kept Rommel’s tanks from breaking through. Yet, absent from his post, he was guilty of a grave offense.

  They would ask for an explanation. Whether he refused to offer one, or whether he told his story, he was damned in either case. Then he thought of Private Higgins, who had seen the weird people who paraded along the line. Higgins might save him.

  CHAPTER 3

  Insubordination

  Anything can happen to a man during the khamsin, and Rowan had not, after all, been out of his company sector; it was clear that he had not been drinking, and it was just as plain that sheer exhaustion had whipped him down, so that he had to be hauled to the rear. But during the ride he had muttered something about Maatkara.

  And that started Major Crane wondering. He had a bleak, bitter eye, he had good intentions, and absolutely no imagination; he was all soldier. And of course, he wanted a full report. So Rowan, remembering that Private Higgins had clearly seen Maatkara, told Crane what had happened.

  “And Private Higgins was a witness, sir,” Rowan concluded.

  Major Crane shook his head. “I’m afraid I can’t take his testimony, captain.”

  Rowan flared up, “I think I’m entitled to his testimony. I’ve tried to be frank. Now my sanity is in question—”

  “Just a moment,” the major cut in. “Let’s not put it exactly that way. Neither your sanity nor your veracity. It is merely a matter of having the board determine whether your hallucinations are…ah…likely to be recurrent, and to the prejudice of your usefulness with combat troops. No officer or enlisted man, other than you and Private Higgins, saw this Egyptian girl.”

  “And that is why I demand—I am entitled to demand a witness—”

  “I am sorry, Captain Rowan, but Private Higgins died in action, very shortly after you were relieved of command. I judge from your tone and expression that you did not, could not have known of it.”

  Rowan felt sick, and he looked it. “I did not.”

  * * * *

  So they kept Rowan in Cairo for observation and treatment.

  Getting away from the front was, in itself, splendid. The army had from the start defrauded and tricked him; he had been accepted for technical supervisory work, and here he was, with combat troops. He had bitterly resented this, though he had tried to do his best. But now, he found, they did not want him in the ordnance shops where he could be useful in salvaging equipment.

  That was the army: seeing apparitions not only makes you unfit for command, but unfit for everything else. And so, with nothing to do but mull over the final injustice, Rowan found a large supply of excellent brandy…

  * * * *

  It was no secret that he was tossing them off heavily. Army opinion, in fact, considered that such relaxation might help. Aviators cracked, good ones. So did line troops, in spite of every effort to weed out those whose nerves were too highly keyed for the strain. The new army didn’t bandy “cowardice” about as the old armies had. A man of given nervous strength can bear just so much shock, just as a man of given bulk cannot lift more than a certain weight. And maybe they could finally salvage Rowan for duty.

  They told him all this, but it did not help. He repeated, over and over again, “They claim I’m wacky, only not enough so to be locked up.”

  All that soothing stuff about recuperating did not fool Rowan. He knew they doubted his sanity. But smooth old brandy helped. Sometimes, its bouquet was like a memory of Maatkara’s perfume. Sometimes, far gone in the peculiar intoxication of brandy, he heard voices. The veil which divides the seen from the unseen became very thin, so that at times he saw her, and the solemn priests and dignitaries. But he could not understand what their gestures and their scarcely audible words meant.

  Then Senusert came to see him. The Copt now looked scarcely sixty. He wore a black robe, and high hat, as before. And he said in his stilted English, “I have heard. Maybe I can do something for you.”

  “You’ve done plenty,” Rowan growled.

  “It is not our fault that you are one of those people who are sensitive to psychic influences. We hoped that some officer would be.”

  “You can see the invisible,” Rowan said, bitterly, “but you couldn’t see that this hocus-pocus would ruin me and not help you!”

  “No man can see the future,” the Copt protested.

  “Then go away and leave me alone!”

  “I am only trying to repair the damage. Now, the real trouble is that you are not really sure that there was a Maatkara, that you did not have a hallucination. If you knew, positively knew, it would—”

  “It would not,” Rowan cut in, “help me one bit! They’d still think I was nuts.”

  But Senusert shook his head. “If you really knew, instead of merely believing, you would quit drinking, you would recover, and the army would know that you had recovered. But before they can know, you must be sure.”

  This made sense. He had relied so much on the evidence of Private Higgins, even before his sanity had been questioned. Rowan began to gain hope from the smooth, even voice and the intent eyes of the strange old Copt, who had actually become younger looking as nature repaired the damage done by furnishing vital force for those phantoms seventy miles west of Cairo. So, Rowan brightened.

  “Let me hear it.”

  “You are alone with an idea which you cannot believe. But there are other ways of being alone, and these are just as deadly. A bottle is never good company.”

  The peculiar accent on bottle made Rowan straighten up. Senusert conveyed more by what he did not say than by what he did speak.

  “Let’s hear it.”

  The priest rose. “Come with me. You have been alone too long.”

  When Rowan went with Senusert, he was almost sure that he would again see Maatkara. And his eagerness shocked him, though it was stimulating…

  They went into an ancient house in the quarter which is near the citadel. At the narrow door which pierced the wall, Senusert paused, and fumbled with a key. Before Rowan could quite guess what had happened, he was in a small courtyard, and behind him, a latch clicked. He was locked in.

  Then he saw the girl who arose from the rug which was spread out between the basin of the little fountain, and the clump of jasmine in the corner. For a moment, he thought he was back in the desert, looking into the fierce, weird light of the sandstorm, for it seemed that he was facing Maatkara, and that she was again coming toward him, eyes aglow and arms extended.

  There was that familiar and blood-stirring sweetness, the ripple of shoulder length curls, but this exquisite creature spoke something which resembled English, pieced out with Arabic which Rowan understood in spots. But it did not make any difference what she said, for the recognition and welcome in her splendid eyes made trifles like sanity quite irrelevant.

  Taking her in his arms was so natural that he did not even think of telling himself that he based his move on a phantom which only he and the late Private Higgins had seen. He could not quite tell whether he smelled jasmine, or Maatkara, or a strange and new and lovely creature who looked like the girl from the desecrated tombs, out where the new dead began to outnumber those who had died in the ages when war was a gentleman’s business.

  That was the trouble with war: a dirty business that got one down. War used to be a simple matter of not fearing to die for a cause; now, it simmered down to fearing that one would not die soon enough. In the tomb paintings, they quit fighting each Spring to do the ploughing, and they quit each Fall to bring in the harvest. But this was the kind of war invented by a grotesque little ma
n who sat behind the lines and let others wonder if they, or all nature had gone mad.

  The painted kings on the temple walls went out in front, the first to fight. This was otherwise: a third rate corporal started it, and then watched from far behind the lines…

  The girl had a strange name, so it was natural to call her Maatkara. She accepted his whimsy. He walked on air, not tiles, when he followed her into the ancient house in the shadow of the citadel. And he was at home in the stuccoed room, where a Kurdish rug glowed in shimmering scarlet and unbelievable blue – a long narrow rug spread out on a long bench.

  Senusert was right, Rowan told himself as he sat down. He no longer cared who thought him crazy. Maatkara was better than brandy, and ever so much more fragrant.

  But Maatkara evaded Rowan, and slipped shadow-like from the bench; and in the deepening dusk of the thick-walled room, she stood poised on her tiptoes for a moment, her skirt swirling as she turned.

  “You must help my people, captain. Until you help them, I can think only of their woe and their despair. Senusert, my uncle, has done all he can, but—”

  A great weariness made Rowan’s shoulders droop. “What can I do? I, with one company—when a whole army, a grand army, a fighting army, couldn’t advance?”

  But Maatkara was as patient as she was alluring, and she came closer. “The Gods move in strange ways, Captain-With-Double-Sight. We need one who can see through the veil, and these other captains can see only one of the seven forms.”

  Her voice was lower than most women’s; it did not irritate, it soothed and it exalted him, and he could not let his logic rise up in laughter. “What seven forms, Maatkara?”

  “Each human being is far more than you people dream, more even than you suspect. There is a Name, a Power, a Shadow, a Spirit; an Astral Double, the Conscious Soul, and then, the Body which we of Egypt have embalmed as from ancient days.”

  He had heard something of that sort before. The Astral Double, for instance, was that shadow-duplicate of the body, a link between visible and invisible, without which the flesh could not take nourishment from food, or win vitality from the sun. And the Name was merely “identity,” that which kept one separate from all else; not a thing, not an attribute, but rather, the awareness of consciousness. And Maatkara was trying to explain these things to him, and he began to understand.