Pyramids

by Fred Saberhagen

  "No sir, I don't see it that way at all. Believe me, I'm glad to get a place like this to stay in. And with a place like this, it's natural you'd want a housesitter. It's great for me, handy to school, a good place to study…"

  The old man sighed; he was reluctantly, or so it seemed, allowing himself to remain persuaded that it was a good idea to leave Scheffler here alone. Never mind that it had been his own idea to begin with.

  "Mrs. White will handle all the housework," Montgomery Chapel muttered. He had already covered that; he was starting to repeat himself. Perhaps, with age, his mind was wandering a little. Perhaps he was just running through a mental checklist, making sure that he had thought of everything. "What I rely on you to do, is to keep an eye on the place, of course—and deal with all the messages. There's a phone-answering machine—I'll show you presently how that works. In general, I am not anxious for anyone to know where I can be reached, or even that I am traveling." I see.

  At that point Uncle Monty had gone over to the window and put back a curtain to look out at the falling snow. It was coming down thickly enough to reduce the nearby buildings to gray shadows. "There's one man in particular," he said then, and sighed so deeply that it made him cough. It sounded to Scheffler as if some important information might be going to come out now. "One man in particular I'm not anxious to see. I haven't seen him for a number of years, and his appearance might have changed since then—or it might not have changed very much."

  Uncle Monty turned from the window, letting the curtain fall back, and stared at Scheffler. "Looked about thirty years of age when last I saw him. Undoubtedly he's really older. Darker than you. And shorter, average height or less, but he's stronger than he looks. Caucasian blood, mainly, I should say, though there's a suggestion of the Oriental in his appearance. Perhaps a touch of the Negro also."

  "What's his name?"

  "His real name I don't know. I've heard him called Pilgrim. And Peregrinus, which is the Latin form of the same name." Uncle Monty spelled the variation out. "And once I heard him called just Scar. That was perhaps an abbreviation for something else, because he has no readily visible scars. Of course if he comes while I am gone he might be using some other name entirely. Present himself under some subterfuge. But he has a—how to put it?—a presence about him. I think you'll know him if he shows up."

  It was beginning to sound to Scheffler as if his great-uncle's decades of adventure might not be over after all. Maybe his questionable dealings in antiquities weren't concluded either.

  Scheffler asked: "What do I do if he does show up?"

  "Tell him no more than you can help about where I am. Or about the state of my affairs."

  "Right." It was an easy enough promise to make, since Scheffler himself knew next to nothing of those affairs. And up to that time he had known nothing at all of where Uncle Monty was going on this sudden trip. At first Scheffler had thought the trip might well have something to do with the old man's health, but the old man's vigorous appearance argued against that.

  "But," Uncle Monty resumed, "if you think that you have seen him, or believe that you have heard from him—you might call the number that I will leave for you, and let me know. There'll be an envelope for you, containing information on how to reach me, on the kitchen counter the morning you move in." He peered at the younger man with what looked to Scheffler like a mixture of cunning and anxiety.

  "All right sir. I can certainly do that. Anything else?"

  "I shouldn't like to hear of any wild parties while I am gone." Uncle Monty's eyes didn't exactly twinkle—they glinted. "Though you don't strike me as the type for that. And you are to remain the sole tenant. No one else is to have a key."

  "Of course."

  "Beyond that—help yourself, to the foodstuffs, and whatever else you may want to use. I expect to be back, as I say, in about four months."

  It was at that moment that they heard the outer door open. "That'll be Mrs. White," said the old man, with renewed briskness. "Come along and meet her. I've already told her that my grandnephew is going to be staying here."

  They found Mrs. White hanging up her cloth coat just inside the rear door of the apartment, which opened off an alcove of the kitchen. Her galoshes were already sitting, draining the muck of December sidewalks on a small folded rug. Mrs. White was black, and stoutly built. Scheffler would have been hard put to try to guess her age. Her hair contained one broad dramatic streak of gray, but that looked as if it might have been dyed in.

  She acknowledged Scheffler's presence with a bare minimum of words, and looked him over with an air of reserved suspicion. When he made a tentative motion toward shaking hands, she instantly turned away and opened a closet full of household tools.

  As Mrs. White started on her days vacuuming in the bedroom wing, the interrupted tour resumed. The next room down the west hallway after the one holding the pyramid model might have been a small gallery in a museum. It contained more statues and glass cases, and a couple of chairs of carven wood so ancient in appearance that it looked as if it might be worth your life to sit in one. There were also two mummies. To Scheffler the lacquered cases and the bandaged figures looked as genuine as everything else here, as real as anything he had ever seen in a museum, and in much better condition. The cases holding the mummies stood open, their lids beside them, and were at least as finely made as the antique chairs. Scheffler was on the verge of asking if the mummies were real, but held back, not wanting to demonstrate his ignorance.

  The glass display cases in the center of the room contained several model boats, or ships, made of finely detailed wood and cloth and metal, oars and oarsmen in place as well as the sails and figures of important passengers, gloriously decorated. Scheffler paused to look at them for a while. There was a label that would not have looked out of place in a museum, though rather terse: SOLAR BARQUES, FOURTH DYNASTY.

  His great-uncle took note of his concentration on the model boats. The old man said, "Sometimes irreverently called 'skyboats' by modern students. To bear the soul on to its final destination."

  "Among the stars."

  "Yes. In a way. One mustn't expect to find too much consistency in the next world. Or in this one, for that matter… come along here, there's something I want to show you."

  There was another room after the "Museum Gallery"—Gallery Two, Scheffler immediately christened it. At the windowless west end was a large alcove, fenced off by a formidable steel grillwork that reached from floor to ceiling. A small closed gate or door in the middle of the grill made the alcove into a richly furnished jail cell. Richly furnished indeed, and well lighted. Jewelry reposed on stands and in niches. More than one of the items looked like thick and heavy gold.

  At the rear of the alcove was a plastered wall, painted in Egyptian figures; and in front of the center of that rear wall there hung a curtain; or maybe, Scheffler thought, it should be called a tapestry, because of the embroidered figures on it. The bottom of the curtain fell a foot or two above the floor of the alcove, and a double step of rough stone blocks led up to the curtain as if it might conceal a doorway.

  "The only really valuable things I keep in the apartment," said Uncle Monty, "are in that area behind the grill." He shook the bars gently with an old hand. "Before you leave today, I'll show you where the key to the door is kept. In the remote chance of there being a fire in the building, or some such difficulty, then you'd have to be able to get at them."

  Responsibilities were mounting. Scheffler wasn't sure at what financial level things became "really valuable" in his uncle's mind. He supposed he ought to make sure, hesitated, then took a stab at it. "Sir? You say the only 'really valuable' things? Then are the other Egyptian things in the apartment all genuine? The statues and furniture and all? It wouldn't be any of my business, except if I'm going to be the caretaker…"

  Great-uncle Montgomery raised an eyebrow, considering. "You certainly have a right to ask, under the circumstances. I suppose that you've heard, from your mother a
nd others, of the accusations that were made against me, forty years ago and more. How I was supposed to have faked a great many artifacts, and sold them? Well, there was no truth in any of those charges." And the old man looked at him fiercely.

  "Yes sir, my mother did say something to me about all that. A long time ago." And she had returned to the subject quite recently, when Scheffler had phoned her to say he'd heard from Uncle Monty. But certainly Scheffler had never heard anyone else talking about it. The old boy was quite wrong if he thought his youthful troubles were still a common topic of discussion decades later.

  Uncle Monty pressed on. "You realize, I hope, that nothing of the sort was ever proven, against me or my brother. That no one ever dared to take such accusations to court."

  "Yes sir," said Scheffler dutifully. Though 'no one ever dared' was not exactly the way he'd heard the story.

  Uncle Monty gestured tersely toward the rear of the protected alcove. "That wall back there is a reproduction of a tomb-wall built in Egypt in the twenty-ninth century BC. The stair-steps and a few of the other stones are original. To move the entire real wall here and install it would have been impossible. With that one exception, everything you see in this apartment is a genuine artifact." He paused, considered, and seemed to decide to stay no more for the moment.

  "I see, sir." Although Scheffler wasn't sure he really did. He walked right up to the grillwork, looking through it and resting his hands on one of the horizontal bars.

  "Probably the necessity for you to open that grill-work will not arise while I am gone."

  "No sir, I didn't mean—"

  "However, in case of some emergency…" And his uncle beckoned him back into the adjoining room.

  Once there, he removed one of the top sections from the model pyramid—it was evidently lighter than it looked—and indicated the chambers revealed inside. "Here—in what some call Campbell's Chamber, after an early nineteenth-century explorer. I'm leaving the key in here." Scheffler saw the key in his great-uncle's hand, and saw it disappear, sliding into a small cavity. There was a faint hard tap as it came to rest. "Not too easy to get at; you might have to tip the whole model on its side, and shake it out, or devise some kind of tool. But it's there. In case of some emergency, as I said."

  "Right. In case of fire."

  The old man squinted at Scheffler, as if trying to decide what else his young tenant should know. "Exactly," he said at last, somehow managing to convey the idea that fire wasn't really what he'd had in mind, although he'd mentioned it before. Then he turned and moved back into the other room, toward the protected alcove. Scheffler followed.

  "Getting that wall built in properly was quite a job," Professor Chapel said. "Many of the bricks and stones, as I say, are genuine. They were brought from Egypt in several shipments. Yes, quite a job to erect it as you see it here. As I say, most of the wall is a modern reproduction, done from photographs. Only the stones of the false door, behind the curtain, and an few of the other parts are original."

  "Sir?"

  "Yes?"

  "Did you say there's a door behind that curtain? A 'false door'?"

  "Yes. The door through which the spirit of the tomb's occupant departed for the hereafter. Built right into a wall, as you see. It could not be opened physically."

  "Oh. No solar barques this time, hey?"

  "Perhaps not… as I said before, myths, beliefs, are not required to be consistent." Uncle Monty came closer to smiling than Scheffler had seen him do yet. "Nor, for that matter, is reality. Hm. It took me a long time to discover that."

  "Sir?"

  "Never mind. The original owner of this tomb was a distant relative of Pharaoh." And the old man was off, delivering a discursive lecture on what he called the Old Kingdom, of which Scheffler was able to understand very little. The only halfway intelligent comment that he could find to make was that he had seen a room somewhat similar to this one in the Field Museum.

  That set off the old man's contempt. Great-uncle Montgomery, dilating on the faults of museums, their greed and general incompetence, grew somewhat breathless. Maybe the Field, or the Oriental Institute, or some of the others, were still nursing hopes that they might come into possession of something of value when he died—well, if so, they'd find out differently.

  Scheffler noted silently that the old man did not mention TMU at all—Thomas More University, where he'd been a faculty member in his youth. Evidently, even forty years later they could not possibly harbor even the faintest hope that he would leave them anything at all.

  It was only a mild tirade, but still the old man leaned in the doorway wheezing for a few moments after it was over. Maybe his health was shakier than Scheffler had thought at first. Then, with a nod for Scheffler to follow him, he led the way back into the parlor. There, with evident relief, he sank into one of the overstuffed chairs, motioning his grandnephew to take one of the seats opposite him.

  It was an impressive room, and evidently his uncle saw him taking note of his surroundings. "I own this apartment, too, of course. Free and clear now. It wasn't a common arrangement back in the Thirties, when this building was put up. Condominiums then were not the popular idea that they later became. But it is mine, and now of course worth a small fortune in itself. Whoever inherits my things will get the apartment too." And he looked at Scheffler earnestly.

  Scheffler was vaguely disturbed. Maybe, as he thought about it, even offended. To make matters worse, he also felt, somewhere way down deep, a pang of genuine cupidity. Sure, of course, he would like to be a millionaire. Sure, at this moment he was probably on better terms with the old man than were the one or two other surviving relatives. But at the same time Scheffler wasn't about to start holding his breath until he came into an inheritance. He was doing all right as he was, without a million. He'd be an engineer when he got out of school. And his mother had told him more than one story about this man.

  "Look, Uncle Monty, you don't have to pay me anything to do a little house-sitting for you. Like I said, it really helps me out too, and I'm glad to do it. Okay?"

  His great-uncle, still wheezing faintly in his chair, had peered at Scheffler narrowly for several seconds, without speaking. Then he had given a slightly crooked smile, as if he were satisfied by what he saw.

  Coming back to the apartment a week later, to move in on the scheduled day, Scheffler had found a white envelope waiting for him on the kitchen counter, just as his great-uncle had promised. The envelope was a little bulkier than Scheffler had expected. Inside were ten fifty-dollar bills—"for living expenses," as the note tersely explained. It also gave him a phone number at which his uncle could be reached during the next four months.

  The number, starting out 011 20, struck Scheffler as unusual, and he spent a little time with the reference pages of the Chicago phone book. As far as he could tell, his aged and perhaps ailing Uncle Monty had departed for Cairo, Egypt.

  TWO

  As soon as he had chosen a bedroom for himself, and had taken another brief look at the museum wing, Scheffler started to check out some of the other practical aspects of his new home, beginning with the refrigerator and kitchen cabinets.

  The note from Uncle Monty had reiterated that Mrs. White did no cooking and washed no dishes, but otherwise, prospects were bright. The large kitchen contained an upright freezer, the size of a standard refrigerator, well stocked with packages of meat. Scheffler, reading labels, discovered steaks, sausages, lamb and veal. Surely all of this had not been bought just for the house sitter's benefit. The old man might be thin, but he was apparently something of a gourmet. Was it possible that he still entertained heavily? Maybe. That wasn't any of Scheffler's business anyway.

  The refrigerator, next to the freezer, was almost empty, but the pantry and the capacious kitchen cabinets held large stores of canned and packaged goods. The gas stove was old, made of black iron, and you needed a match to light it. But it was large and capable-looking. On one of the long counters stood a new microwave oven, wit
h impressive electronic controls. All in all, it appeared to Scheffler that over the next few months he was going to be eating well, and at a minimal cost. He would even be able to put off looking for another part-time job to replace the one he'd dropped a month ago under the pressure of schoolwork. He decided to pick out a bottle of wine some evening soon and drink a toast to Uncle Monty.

  Even as well provisioned as he was, there were a couple of things he wanted to get from the store right away. Milk and breakfast cereals were regular parts of his diet, but evidently not essentials to Uncle Monty. Still, Scheffler was glad he hadn't tried to bring along any of the food supplies from his old apartment; his former cohabitants there would be having enough trouble as it was. They always had plenty of trouble, what with the neighbors, the landlord, the deadbeat members past and present of their own group, the noise, the communal puppy�God, he wondered how he'd been able to stand it as long as he did. Well, until Uncle Monty had called him out of the blue one day, he hadn't had a lot of choice. Scheffler in fact had had to display firmness to keep some of his roommates in the old place from packing up and moving along with him. Fifteen rooms, man, after all. And you're gonna live there all alone? But that was one thing his benefactor had been extremely definite about; no one else was to move in with him. Scheffler, having come to know students in his two years at TMU, could quite easily see his uncle's point of view on this. If one more moved in there would soon be two more, then five, and maybe eventually fifteen. Uncle Monty must have known students too, from his own years at the university, and students' ways probably hadn't changed all that much over the decades.

  It was dusk and beginning to snow again when Scheffler returned to his new home from a brief grocery expedition. He had been able to discover some stores within easy walking distance, only a couple of blocks west. He looked into the freezer once more when he got home, and gloated a little, but he didn't feel like trying to cook anything tonight. What he really wanted more than anything else at the moment was to talk about his new situation. And, yes, there was a specific listener who came to mind.