Pyramids

by Fred Saberhagen

  When Becky picked up her phone receiver, Scheffler could hear her still talking to someone else in the background. She was a student too, living in another shared apartment.

  He waited until he had her undivided attention before he said anything. Then he announced: "Hey, guess who's just installed himself on Lake Shore Drive?"

  "Tom! Your uncle really let you take over the place? That's great!"

  He read his new phone number to Becky. Looking at the instrument closely, he was struck by how modern the apartment's entire phone system was, just like the lights and the plumbing. Uncle Monty evidently had a keen appreciation of when antiquity was a virtue and when it was not.

  Becky was now eager to see the place as soon as possible. Already whoever she had been talking to in her own apartment had effectively ceased to exist for her.

  "When can I see it, Tom? It's really just walking distance from my place here, isn't it?"

  "Sure, it's walking distance, if you're a fair walker." He repeated the address for her. "It's the oldest-looking building in about two blocks. You can't miss it." She was about to hang up and start out right away when Scheffler had an inspiration and stopped her. "Hey, tell you what, Becky. Why don't you stop at the Chinese place on the way and pick up some food? We can have dinner overlooking the Drive. I'll reimburse you when you get here. Get the kind of stuff you like." He was feeling wealthy.

  Only about three quarters of an hour had passed before Becky was standing at his front door, her eyes already wide with the elegance of the lobby downstairs and the small foyer into which she had been deposited by the elevator. Her arms were wrapped around a large brown paper bag from which a couple of white Chinese-restaurant cartons protruded slightly. Scheffler took the bag and Becky came into the apartment, shaking snow from her cap, unzipping her ski jacket. She was on the short side, energetic, with blond hair now flying as she shook her head, and blue eyes now widened even more.

  "Wow, what a place! That doorman downstairs gave me a look."

  Once inside, and relieved of her winter outer garments, she refused at first to accept his money for the Chinese food.

  They had gone Dutch treat before, but this time Scheffler was ready to insist, and thrust cash into her hand. "It was my idea. Anyway, with all the rent I'm saving I'm going to be loaded. There's a lot of stuff in the freezer, too. I just didn't feel like cooking anything tonight."

  A couple of minutes later, with the food rewarming in the big gas oven, Becky was commenting on the armored condition of the front door, unusual even for the big city. There were three locks, with bolts like prison bars, that anchored the door at top and bottom, as well as at the side.

  "But it doesn't have a chain."

  "You don't need any. Closed-circuit TV." Scheffler demonstrated the small screen beside the door. "And this door. It's steel inside the wood," said Scheffler. "Listen." He rapped with a knuckle on the wood-grained surface, which felt like the side of a battleship. "The back door's the same way. Even the windows have grillwork, though I don't see why they need it. Twelve stories up, it'd take a human fly to get in."

  "And your uncle still lives here alone?"

  "He's my great-uncle, actually. Yeah, my mother says as far as she knows he's been living here alone ever since the place was built. That was around fifty years ago. Maybe he had a lot of guests and parties in his youth."

  "Wasn't he ever married?" Becky, still wide-eyed, turned this way and that, admiring things as they strolled back through the dining room and parlor. She paused to touch, with one finger, the statue of a monster.

  "Not that I know of. He was engaged once, when he was young, some society girl. She ran off with his brother, and the two of them were never heard of again."

  "His own brother, huh? Why didn't he ever move to a smaller place?" Becky had stopped now to admire a different statue. This one had the head of a man.

  "Search me. I guess he's been rich all along, or at least ever since he started importing antiques. So he needs room for all this stuff, and he can afford it. I can see why he likes it."

  "So can I." She sighed at a tiny chest, dazzling white, sitting on a bookshelf. It looked like it might be solid ivory, and whatever the material, it was all carved from one piece, even the ring-shaped handles. "Tell me again, Tom—oh, it's none of my business."

  "What?"

  "How'd he happen to pick you for this house-sitting job?"

  "I'm just about his closest living relative—except for my mother, and they're not exactly on great terms. She'll just barely speak to him in an emergency. That's assuming his brother is really dead, which I guess is a safe assumption after all this time. I forget now what the brother's name was. Anyway I think he was the older, and Uncle Monty's in his mid-seventies now."

  "A safe assumption, then."

  "Looks that way. Anyhow, Uncle Monty somehow found out that I was a student here at TMU. And I guess he needed a house-sitter when he decided to go off on a trip. So here I am."

  "Lucky you." It sounded like a heart-felt sentiment. "So, where'd he go on his trip?"

  "Some mysterious destination. He never really told me." He'd been instructed to say no more than necessary to anyone regarding the old man's affairs; it seemed the least that he could do.

  "Oh."

  They dined from fine china, arranged on the polished wood of the dining room table so they could overlook the city lights and the dark lake while with silver spoons they scooped beef chow mein and egg foo young from Uncle Monty's oven-proof serving dishes. There was one distant light, a kind of beacon, way out on the winter lake, that Scheffler supposed marked one of the city's water-intake cribs. Nearer, the other apartment buildings and the Drive itself made up a wonderland of changing brightness.

  Scheffler found some fancy glasses, and picked out a bottle of wine more or less at random. He knew very little about wine, but he didn't suppose there was any vintage intended to go with egg rolls.

  They ate, and tried to decide about the wine. They talked a little about the university, at which they shared one class. They exchanged opinions, all of them founded in ignorance, about the various paintings and other collectable objects displayed around the walls of the dining room. It was the longest talk he'd ever had with Becky. He'd been out with her a couple of times, on inexpensive dates, but he hadn't yet made up his mind on what she was like. He wondered, now, if he would have called anyone else tonight if she'd been busy. He suspected he might have waited until she wasn't.

  When their meal was finished, they worked together in a brief but thorough cleanup, getting the dishes into the washer and pondering which of the many settings on its controls would be appropriate. Then with refilled wineglasses they set off on a tour of the apartment, sampling the nighttime views from different windows.

  Becky paused for a moment after Scheffler had pointed out the mummy cases to her. They were still halfway across the large room from the mummies. "Tom. You know, I think I can smell the spices? Didn't they use spices? Or something. Almost like incense."

  "I bet my uncle never burned incense in his life. He doesn't seem the type." Scheffler moved closer to the cases, sniffing at the air. "There's something, though." It was weird, maybe only suggestion or something, but he thought that he could smell it too. Something, with a suggestion of the unfamiliar, the exotic. "One of the cases isn't too far from the radiator," he offered at last. "Steam heat, and the pipes get hot."

  "Tom. After two thousand years?" Then Becky giggled. "Maybe it's his girlfriend and his brother."

  "I think it'd be more like three thousand years. Maybe more than that. Anyway, the mummies might be."

  "Might be what?"

  "Well, my guess is that they could be fakes. It's all public knowledge anyway. Back in my Uncle Monty's youth he and his brother apparently both got themselves into trouble selling forged antiquities."

  "Apparently?"

  "There's not much doubt that they were. Forged, I mean. A lot of them, anyway. " Scheffler sipped his
wine. "There was quite a scandal back in the late Forties. His brother had vanished by then, but it looked for a while like Uncle Monty might be taken to court. Anyway that's how I heard the story from my mother. In the end the whole thing was kind of hushed up, because the way things were going it looked like it might reflect on the university, too."

  "TMU?"

  "Sure. They had a big collection then; I don't know if they still do. And a lot of the important things in their collection were dug up by the Chapel brothers. Or Monty and—Willis, I think that was his name—claimed they'd dug 'em up. Uncle Monty was on their faculty for a couple of years, back in the Thirties. That was when he and Willis first started traveling to Egypt and importing things. The University of Chicago might have been involved, too, in some way; they were really into Egyptology in a big way then; the Oriental Institute and all that.

  "Anyway, in the late Forties and Fifties when the radiocarbon dating methods started to come in, the trouble started. The organic materials, the wood and cloth, in all those well-preserved things that Uncle Monty and his brother had been peddling turned out to be no more than a few hundred years old at the most. Where and how they really got them I don't know. Somewhere in Africa, evidently. Maybe some were genuine and some weren't. I guess forging antiquities has always been a big business."

  "But he's still wealthy."

  "Oh yeah. Obviously. I guess he had a lot of satisfied customers. And he'd been selling golden artifacts and jewels to private collectors, too. Stuff that was worth a bundle, whether it was antique or not. God knows where he got it all."

  Becky was looking around again. "I don't see any gold here in this room. Are these things here—?"

  "First he told me everything in the apartment was genuine. Then in the next breath he said the really valuable, quote unquote, stuff was back over there. There's a kind of a special room."

  As soon as Scheffler had said it he wished he hadn't. But the words were out. Well, it would hardly be possible to have a visitor here and not show that room off.

  "Oh. Can I see?" Becky's big blue eyes were almost prayerful. "Why not?"

  Behind the sturdy steel grillwork, the supposed real treasures waited as before. Becky oohed and ahhed for a minute or two. Then gradually her gaze became concentrated more and more in one direction. She gave Scheffler to understand that there was one golden necklace in particular, so heavy it was more like a collar, that was almost crying out to be touched.

  "Oh, Tom. Do you suppose that I could put it on? Just for a moment?"

  He'd seen this coming for several minutes and had been trying to think of what to say when it arrived. "I don't have the key handy. Anyway, I'm not supposed to open the gate."

  "But the key's around here somewhere? Please? I'm not going to steal it and run off with it, you know."

  "Well."

  When Becky saw his genuine reluctance to unlock the grillwork she quit pushing. Cheerfully. There were plenty of other interesting things to look at, outside the cage. Back in the adjoining room, she mentioned something that she'd heard, or read, about how mummies had actually been in oversupply in Egypt, and how in later centuries they had been ground up and shipped to Europe to make medicine. Scheffler had read something along that line also. "Actually I think it was for aphrodisiacs."

  Becky considered that. "You know more on the subject than I thought you would. Are you and your mother your uncle's only relatives?"

  "As far as I know."

  "So you might be in line to inherit all this stuff. Or will he leave it to a museum somewhere?"

  "That's one thing I'd be willing to bet he won't do."

  They explored the apartment some more, outside the cage. They looked at some lamps and statues. They became interested in the fireplace in the library, and it turned out to be easy to get a fire going. Scheffler, the expert, found a damper and pushed it open. Everything necessary was on hand, including packaged piñon logs, some kindling, even long fancy matches. There was no telling where the smoke was going to come out, Scheffler thought, but the chimney was drawing well.

  Becky sniffed the air near the hearth. "Smells great."

  And it did, more aromatic than the mummies, though almost all the smoke, thank God, was going up the chimney somewhere.

  Now Becky turned back to the grillwork and the gold behind it. "Let's turn out the lights—I wonder how it looks by firelight alone?"

  They were both silent for a while, once the electric lights in the library and both gallery rooms were out. He'd deliberately made the fire small, and the illumination that it gave from two rooms away was weak and unsteady. Under its influence the enigmatic figures on the wall and on the cloth curtain of the false door developed a tendency to sway, and march in place.

  "Let's finish off that wine," Becky suggested.

  When he came back with the bottle, he stopped in the doorway, where he stood swaying a little like the painted figures on the wall. Becky was still standing where she had been, right in front of the grillwork, but all the clothes she had been wearing were now scattered on the fine carpet. Shoes, socks, red sweater, jeans, a couple of little scraps of finer fabric.

  "I know what the trouble was," she said, demurely flicking a glance in Scheffler's direction and away again. "None of those clothes would have gone at all well with real gold. You were quite right not to let me try it on with them." She was posing with her hands behind her, gracefully but almost as if her wrists were tied. The firelight touched her skin and warmed it and went away again.

  Scheffler still said nothing. Not watching what he was doing, he groped out with one hand and put the wine down on a table. "Now," said Becky. She raised her arms and performed a little undulation of her own. "I bet this is what that ancient queen wore the first time she put on that necklace."

  He moved away wordlessly to the model of the pyramid, and tried to reach the key. His hands had started shaking, and anyway his hand was too big for Campbell's chamber. But Becky was standing close beside him now, and her hand was just small enough to reach in for the key.

  Scheffler's hands were steady enough to fasten the golden collar around her throat.

  … and, some hours later, while Becky was still asleep, Scheffler slid silently out of his new bed and moved around it in the dark bedroom to crouch down at the other side. With steady fingers he loosened the ancient catch and slid the weighty metal and the jewels away from her perspiring skin. She did not stir at the parting. And there, on the bedside table where he'd put it, was the key to the grillwork. He'd even managed to keep track of that.

  Walking naked into the darkened grillworked alcove, the necklace in his hands, Scheffler could see, by the last light of the dying fire, one smooth steady reflection as of bright metal, no wider than a pencil line, high up inside what must be the frame of the false door. From this angle he could just see past the curtain's edge, as you never would be able to from outside the grill. There must be something back up in there that shone, that glinted brightly. He'd have to take a look at it again tomorrow. He wanted to know the full extent of what had been entrusted to him.

  He put the necklace back into its niche, checked to see that all else was undisturbed, turned and left the alcove, locking the gate silently behind him. Now maybe he'd be able to sleep soundly.

  He was halfway back to bed, padding along through the dim kitchen, when the phone rang for the first time since he'd moved into the apartment. He started guiltily. Immediately the half-thought-out idea leapt to mind that his intrusion with the key had set off some kind of an alarm somewhere. Someone was calling to check up.

  When he lifted the kitchen receiver from its mounting on the wall, moderately loud noise burst out at him, as if the call were being made, with amplification, from some distant radiophone. "Hello?" Scheffler inquired, frowning.

  The voice at the other end was that of a man, and despite the interference it demonstrated presence from the first precise syllable. "Montgomery Chapel, please."

  It was a strange hou
r for anyone to call. "Dr. Chapel isn't in just now, this is his nephew speaking. Can I take a message?"

  "Ah. And when will it be possible to talk to Doctor Chapel directly?"

  "I don't know. If you'll leave your name, I'll—"

  "Ah. Can you then tell me if Dr. Montgomery Chapel is now in Egypt? My name is Peregrinus. Has he recently visited Egypt, or has he discussed with you any travel plans in that direction?"

  "My uncle doesn't discuss his travel plans with me." That was well put, Scheffler silently congratulated himself.

  "I see." And despite getting no direct answer, the man's voice sounded satisfied, as if its owner had somehow managed to learn what he wanted to know. "Goodbye." The last syllable was as precisely enunciated as the first had been. The odd noise from the phone faded gradually into an ordinary dial tone, returned in one more burst, and then was gone, nothing at all like the normal termination of a phone call.

  Scheffler hung up the receiver. He walked to the east window of the kitchen and stood there frowning out at the sky, in the general direction of Egypt. There was light out there, as if the sun were trying to come up, but as usual in winter it was impossible to see any real horizon across the lake.

  THREE

  First dawn, first light.

  Across the Nile, the eastern horizon was etching itself darkly against the great pearl of the slowly warming sky.

  Ptah-hotep, Assistant Chief Priest for the Rituals to Guard the Building of the Tomb, was standing atop the uncompleted pyramid. His bare feet were planted at the approximate center of the stone plain, flat and precisely level, acres in extent, formed by the fiftieth and latest stratum of construction. His fists were planted on his hips, his dark eyes raised to the eastern sky as if to confront a challenger. From this height, two hundred feet and more above the pyramid's vastly broader base, he beheld the green valley and the barren desert, both spread out to receive the dawn.