Willis was shaking his head. He had not heard about this before.
"There was so much of it, after all. And we had no way to distinguish his isotope. He hadn't even bothered to explain to us that his gold was of a special kind. In the Thirties, I can tell you, no one on earth knew very much about the possible isotopes of gold; I suppose few even among scientists had ever heard of isotopes at all. But that doesn't matter now…"
During the break Sihathor and his crew had continued working in the pyramid, and when the others returned the Egyptians were able to show how successful their own techniques would be in getting around the first plug of granite: They had removed an impressive amount of stone, but it would take days at least to bypass the first obstacle.
It had proven much easier to drill holes for the first charge of dynamite.
Willis and Pilgrim, both claiming some expertise, saw to the placement of the charges, while everyone else was evacuated from the interior of the pyramid. Wires were strung, and an electric detonator employed. The sound of the explosion was not impressive outside the pyramid. A few seconds after the blast, a ghostly billow of yellow dust came writhing its way slowly out of the entrance hole. With wet cloths over nose and mouth, the explorers filed back in, crouching. Pilgrim, flashlight in hand, led the way.
The newly fallen granite plug was more than three feet thick, and equally wide. Its length was indeterminate, its upper end being still wedged inside the opening to the Ascending Passage. In its new position the fallen plug also partially blocked the way down to the Pit. Had it been dug free by hand, the diggers beneath it would almost certainly have been crushed like insects when it fell.
"I am impressed with Khufu's engineers," Pilgrim mused aloud after a careful inspection.
Ptah-hotep inclined his head to acknowledge the compliment. "There will be other stones behind this one, ready to slide down whenever this one is removed completely," he reminded everyone.
Sihathor and his extended family had set up a regular production line by now, pushing and throwing the lesser debris from the first blast out of the way, farther down the Descending Passage. A fresh fall of small stone fragments sent everyone briefly scrambling for safety.
Pilgrim decided that the fastest and safest way to proceed now would be to make a way through the solid limestone of the pyramid, around the fallen and jammed plug-stone. It would probably be necessary also to bypass the whole train of other plugs that were pressing down on this one from above; Ptah-hotep assured him there would be five of them in all.
The work went on, in preparation for more blasts.
Pilgrim, remarking that he had the uncomfortable Western sense of time and its value, pushed the workers hard. As soon as Sihathor's people had created some new small crevices and recesses in which he thought dynamite could profitably be detonated, he ordered everyone out again and set new charges.
Again the dynamite achieved a modest success. But now more clearing of rubble and drilling of new holes was necessary. Battery-powered electric lanterns, propped on the sloping floor, made the job vastly easier than it would otherwise have been.
Outside the pyramid, Thothmes and Ptah-hotep had resumed their argument. The subject was still the same, the question of which gods most deserved their service.
Ptah-hotep was by now considering reporting Thothmes, as being no longer reliable for purposes of tomb-robbing, or even exploration. But Thothmes guessed which way his old friend's thoughts were turning, and dissembled cunningly, pretending that he still considered himself firmly pledged to Set.
Meanwhile Monty was turning over in his mind tentative plans for getting rid of Pilgrim, and then dealing with Olivia's police.
When he took an opportunity of seeing her alone, she warned him solemnly that the authorities who had sent her after Pilgrim were not going to let her kidnapping go unpunished.
Monty had a proposal. "I'll help you get to the timelock, if you help me with the settings when we get there. We'll both get away from him." Not that he really wanted to get away just yet—he wanted to learn more about the timelock controls.
"What settings do you want?"
He told her.
She took a long time to think it over. "I don't trust you," she said at last, and shook her head. "Besides, Pilgrim will have the timelock watched."
Pilgrim, while waiting for the digging and blasting to produce results, decided to dispatch some of his helpers to look for his gold outside the pyramid, in the goldsmiths' shops and quarters in Memphis. The Chapel brothers had once or twice visited those shops, and had found some loose gold there and removed it. But Monty said that particular gold had long since been sold in Chicago.
Tantalizing microscopic traces of gold two-oh-three had been found in the funeral temple—confirming that the sought-for metal was once here, doubtless having been worked into the Pharaoh's treasure.
Scheffler, Willis, and Nicky, along with Thothmes, were to go on the expedition to the shops. Everyone else available, including Pilgrim and the Asirgarh, continued working on the pyramid.
Becky remained with Olivia in the temple.
There was, as Scheffler had realized by now, a fairly extensive canal system in the area. The trip to the goldsmiths' shops on the outskirts of Memphis could be made by water.
Cans of gas and oil were brought out of a temple storeroom. Presently four people in a square-sterned boat, powered by the new outboard, cast off from the temple dock. With Scheffler at the helm and Willis navigating they headed through a network of narrow, branching waterways toward the goldsmiths' shops.
It was a trip of several miles. No lions appeared on the unpopulated canal banks, but several crocodiles displayed themselves along with a few interesting snakes. Hundreds of birds, unaccustomed to outboard noise, flew up in great alarm.
At last the heat-shimmering cluster of buildings that Scheffler had glimpsed on his first trip through the timelock appeared in the distance and drew closer. Now one of the buildings he had seen with banners was not far ahead. And now…
"What—?" asked Scheffler, in a disconnected syllable, meanwhile throttling back his motor. Willis turned to look, then Nicky, and then Thothmes. Thothmes uttered a strange sound. If there were words in it they were not English.
The boat was now within a hundred yards of an imposing building, doubtless some kind of a temple. Scheffler was staring in that direction, but not at the building itself. Something was perched atop it, something that was not a banner after all. There were wings on this object, living wings, of bright red and blue. The body attached to them was not that of a bird, more like a lion's, and far too big for any living thing that flew. The head was that of a giant hawk, and the lion's torso crouched on four powerful legs. The mismatched parts of its body were all of the wrong colors.
In broad daylight, the monstrous figure perched there on the stone roof of an imposing temple. Scheffler flipped the outboard into neutral and reached for his rifle.
By now Willis and Nicky had their weapons drawn as well. Thothmes, indifferent to firearms, was crying something that sounded like: "Sefer! Sefer!"
Only now did the apparition appear to become aware of its human observers. It let out a sound, a compound roar strange as the body that produced it; and then it effortlessly launched its heavy body in flight, gliding straight toward the drifting boat.
It was the first time Scheffler had fired the Winchester. Despite his excitement he remembered to hold it tight against his shoulder, but even so the kick was monumental. Nicky and Will were banging away at the same time. The monstrous figure that had been coming straight at them veered away. The bullets had impact, but not as if on flesh and bone and blood. Instead the flying thing became flickeringly transparent. It disappeared for moments and came back, as if shaken by waves and spasms of unreality. In a moment it had vanished, gliding away behind the canal's fringe of palms.
Thothmes had dived into the bottom of the boat. Repeated reassurances were necessary to get him to raise his head agai
n, and when he did he looked at each of the twentieth-century people with awe.
Several minutes passed before he spoke again, trying to explain the nature of the sefer. All that Scheffler could understand with certainty was that Thothmes had been as surprised by it as anyone else.
Nerving themselves to renewed efforts, the explorers pressed on into the goldsmiths' complex.
In the shops of the late Pharaoh's metal-working artisans, no distraction more remarkable than snakes appeared that afternoon. Scheffler stood armed guard while the others gathered a number of gold samples, stock pieces and artifacts. None of these, tested with Pilgrim's borrowed instrument, contained any gold two-oh-three. But according to the device, minute samples of that isotope were present on some of the goldsmiths' tools littering the workbenches.
"It's inside the pyramid somewhere, then," Scheffler reported to the boss on his hand-held radio. "Everything indicates that."
"The conclusion seems inescapable, does it not?" Pilgrim's dry voice continued: "I should like you all to return here as soon as possible. There are some troublesome manifestations. Someone will meet you at the dock, if possible. Over and out."
EIGHTEEN
The motorboat sliced through the quiet water of the canal at its best speed. Beyond the fringe of palms lining the banks ahead, the pyramid loomed changelessly as always.
Suddenly Willis, his hand on the outboard, swore as a rounded shape broke the surface of the still green water dead ahead. The boat veered sharply. Scheffler, more than half expecting to confront another bizarre apparition, whipped up the barrel of the big Winchester again. But the obstruction was only a hippo, and Willis was able to steer around it, almost scraping the gray bulk as they passed.
Sihathor, walkie-talkie in hand, was standing on the temple dock along with most of his Egyptian crew. Before the boat had docked, Sihathor's crew, in a state of great excitement and talking all at once, were relating their own story of incredible apparitions, all from somewhere in their own mythology or religion. They had seen monster snakes inside the pyramid, and spectral crocodiles outside. The apparitions had been driven off, though apparently not injured, by bullets. The heat-projecting rods of the Asirgarh had for some reason proven less effective.
And Sihathor insisted that some of his workers had seen the ba of Khufu, an essence of the dead Pharaoh's spirit in the form of a tiny, birdlike, humanheaded shape. That had been enough to make them throw down their tools. Nevertheless, he reported, Pilgrim, the Asirgarh, and Montgomery Chapel were still inside the pyramid, trying to get on with the job.
Sihathor's mouth, open in speech, stayed that way as he froze in silence, staring over Scheffler's shoulder. Scheffler spun around, in time to see the end of a violent eruption of sand and rock close beside the pyramid, only a few hundred yards away.
A streak of light, visible even in full sunshine, went shooting rocket-like up into the sky.
"My God, what's that?"
Everyone on the dock was already moving toward the pyramid. Scheffler started running, with others close behind him.
As they drew near the site of the eruption, Pilgrim and Monty were coming from the direction of the dark dot of the pyramid's entrance to meet them. And there was Becky, hurrying from the direction of the temple.
"It was the Barque of Khufu. Or one of them," Ptah-hotep explained, gasping for breath as he came to a halt beside Scheffler on the edge of a large, fresh crater in the sand.
Ptah-hotep recalled that five solar boats had been buried in separate locations near the pyramid, for Khufu's use and that of his servants in the next life. But now one of the largest craft was missing. Its burial pit, intact only minutes ago, had now been violently emptied, as if the vessel had been ripped out of its repository by an explosion. To Scheffler the house-sized hole looked like a deep bomb crater.
Olivia was the last to arrive at the scene, along with the Egyptian women who were helping her. She came stumbling around the pyramid from the direction of the temple.
Pilgrim regarded her quizzically as she approached. "This is more than I expected from the collective Egyptian mind," he said, gesturing toward the blasted pit. "Your fellow servants of the Authority, perhaps?"
Coming close enough to look down into the pit, she shook her head. "I can only hope that they will be able to get at you here. But I don't expect they can."
For Thothmes it was the final signal. Staring down into the huge cavity that had been somehow blasted out of the earth, he was now sure that he must separate himself from this band of robbers. Retribution was about to strike them. But merely to run away would not be enough. The robbers must be stopped if possible. Reparations must be made somehow.
He raised his eyes to the blinding sun, and prayed to Ra to show him how.
Between dynamite blasts Pilgrim and Scheffler worked in the tunnel, using gloved hands and steel tools to dig out stones knocked down by the last blast, clearing debris that would let them reach the place where the next charge must be set.
The two men were arguing as they worked.
"I've been talking to the Egyptians," Scheffler said. "They're still grieving for their people. Sihathor lost his wife. All of them lost someone."
"It is a common human fate."
"Who did it to them? You?"
Pilgrim ceased tugging at a rock and gave him a strange look. "You actually believe, Scheffler, that I have somehow wiped out almost the whole population of ancient Egypt? Or the whole population of the Earth? Killed them all, just to get them out of my way? Or in a fit of irritation, perhaps?"
"What else am I supposed to think? Olivia accuses you of mass murder."
"Charitably I will allow that English is not her mother tongue. As for killing, I admit that her soldiers—she would call them police—have sometimes fallen at my hands, in battle. My followers have died at her hands too."
"I think she meant more than that—"
"I am sure she wanted you to think worse than that. And I suppose you are also convinced that we are really in the land of the Pharaohs?"
Scheffler let a rock fall from his hands. "Say that again?"
"And that, if we were somehow able to blast off the entire top of this artificial mountain above our heads"—Pilgrim gestured fiercely—"that the Great Pyramid in your twentieth-century world would somehow become decapitated also?"
"I don't know. Sure, I suppose it would. Why not?"
"Why not? Because that is an absurdity."
"All right then, tell me what would happen. Does the whole universe split every time something in the past is changed? Are we now in some kind of alternate universe? If so, does that mean it's okay for the population of Egypt—maybe the whole population of the Earth—to be wiped out?"
Pilgrim looked disgusted. "Nobody has been wiped out."
Scheffler swept an arm round angrily, as widely as he could in the confined space, indicating the whole invisible country outside. "Then where in hell are they, all the people? Goddam it, give me a straight answer or—"
Pilgrim was for once taken aback, as he might have been by a snarling puppy. Blinking at Scheffler's violence, he answered mildly. "The people of Egypt about whom you are so concerned are in the same miserable hovels they always were. Working for the same brutal masters."
"That whole village of hovels outside is empty! So are the city and the palace, and the houses where the brutal masters lived. So is—"
Pilgrim held up a gentle hand to stop him. "But the original dwellings, rich and poor, are all just as full of people as they ever were. They are not here. This whole world is an artifact. A duplication."
For a long moment Scheffler did not move or speak. Then he said: "A duplication."
"Yes."
"And the original dwellings, with all the people in them. Where are they?"
"Where they belong, in your world. Your past." The little man's tone continued to be mild and conciliatory. "Take my word for it. Or, as always, ask Olivia. Compel her to give you a straight answ
er."
"How am I supposed to do that?"
Pilgrim shrugged.
"Then you're telling me that we are now in some kind of alternate universe?"
Pilgrim tugged out the difficult rock at last, and shoved it clattering down into the lower tunnel. He sighed. "There is only one universe, my friend. But it comprises more components, and more anomalies, than you would perhaps believe. And sometimes the way from one portion of the universe to another is strange and indirect. Sometimes, or so the most respected authorities have written, there is no way at all to get from one part of it to another without accepting almost suicidal risks. And imposing similar risks upon others. That is Olivia's position. She has great concern for the general welfare."
Scheffler stared into the little man's eyes, dark and powerfully alive. "What's your position?" he asked at last.
"My position is, as always, that my crew and I are going home. Perhaps there is no way for us to get there that will keep the eminent authorities and the guardians of everyone's welfare happy. But nevertheless we mean to go. From here to there, without either suicide or murder."
There was obviously more to come. Scheffler waited.
Pilgrim looked at him, as if it had suddenly become important to him to convince Scheffler, or to determine whether he could be convinced. Pilgrim said, "A part of the universe can sometimes be duplicated. Like this one. An abstraction made concrete, a miniature buffer-world constructed for a purpose.
"I have read some of the fanciful stories of your time on the subject of time travel. In reality, for me to go back through the timelock and shoot my grandfather is almost—almost—certainly forbidden by the obvious paradoxes involved. The same restrictions would prevent me from ever prying my gold out of the grasp of noble Khufu, were I to start from the twentieth century and approach him directly in his own era. Do you understand anything at all of what I am saying to you?"
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