EQMM, June 2012

by Dell Magazine Authors

  What-ifs,

  The child he and Nora might have.....

  But shook his head, rid the thought.

  He got home late, his stomach sour from the precinct gut-rot coffee. He had only one dodgy hot dog the whole damned day. His back hurt, and to top it off, the driving rain had drenched his car, in his agitation he'd cracked a window and forgotten to close it.

  Home finally, his head down, walking towards his apartment, one action on his mind.

  Double Jay and to hell with the heresy, he'd sink a couple chunks of ice in there.

  And saw

  The door open

  To his apartment

  Open, well, smashed in, the jam hanging loose. Reached automatically for his weapon, knowing from his cop instinct, the perp would be already long gone.

  But you did what you knew. The gun down by his left leg, he moved the shattered door aside, moved quickly in, feinting to his right lest the apartment wasn't vacant. Taking in the destruction, TV gone, the smell of urine strong, his books, torn, scattered amid his shredded clothes, he thought

  “George?”

  They'd used a baseball bat, must have taken a time to obliterate that strong shell. Jimmy was on his knees, trying to cradle the desperate remains of the poor creature. Tears stung at his eyes, the gun lying beside the discarded bat.

  He let back his head, emitted a howl of such anguish, the gay couple on the floor beneath actually opened their door to see who'd been massacred.

  * * * *

  The bar was busy, the Yankees, top of the ninth, on the widescreen and the crowd roaring as Rodriguez took the field. Jimmy was sitting on a stool a time before Pete noticed him, grabbed a cold one, plonked it in front of his buddy, asked

  “What about them Yankees, huh?”

  Jimmy looked at him but something was off in his eyes, he never looked at the game, drew his jacket back, let Pete see the .38, then

  “Pete, you know the neighborhood, the local B and E merchants, so who is currently boosting apartments?”

  Pete was amazed. Never, in all their years, had Jimmy gone . . . COP. Pete knew no good came off mixing biz and friendship. He muttered some inane excuse and went to serve the thirsty fans. Thinking

  “Few brews, Jimmy will be hunky dory, right?”

  Nope.

  He got back, like, ten minutes in, Jimmy hadn't touched the brew. He gave Pete the dead eye, said

  “The health regulations in need of overhaul”

  Paused

  “You think.”

  Pete looked at the game, seeing nothing, grabbed a cloth, did bar stuff for a minute, then said

  “Anthony Scoria, son of the Borough wise guy, got himself a Jones, is on the out with the family, so supplements his income with a little.. Recreation.”

  Jimmy , still with the dead eye, waited

  Pete sighed, said

  “Hangs in the sports place down on West 29th.”

  Jimmy stood, dropped a few bills on the counter. Pete said

  “Your money's no good in here, you know that.”

  Jimmy looked at the TV, said

  “Use it to update the jukebox.”

  * * * *

  A week later, a fire destroyed the sports bar, the cops, acting on a tip-off found an arsonist's kit in the apartment of an Anthony Scoria. The arrest drew undue attention to his old man and certain . . . family disciplinary consequences would roll down the pike.

  Jimmy, using an old cigar box, wrapped in a miniature Irish flag, dropped the remains of George in the East River. He stared at the dark water for close to half an hour then shook himself, checked his watch, figured if he moved now, he'd be in his apartment for the beginning of the Discovery Channel. They were doing a miniseries on turtles.

  Said to himself

  “All part of the George family.”

  Adjusted the .38 in the waist of his jeans, thought

  “Need something bigger than a cigar box for Nora.”

  Copyright © 2012 by Ken Bruen

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  Novelette: THE RETURN OF THE MUMMY

  by Steven Saylor

  For the past few months, EQMM has been publishing stories in a series that comes together to form Steven Saylor's new novel TheSevenWonders (Minotaur Books). This is our last entry in the series, and it roughly coincides with the book's publication. Readers who've enjoyed our selections won't want to miss Gordianus's trips to the three wonders not visited here. USA Today calls Steven Saylor “a modern master of historical fiction."

  Our journey to see the Seven Wonders took Antipater and me from Rome to Greece and then to Asia Minor and beyond, all the way to Persia—and then, at last, to Egypt.

  Before the Nile reaches the sea, it spreads out in many channels, like the fingers of a wide-open hand. On maps, this vast, watery region forms a triangular shape not unlike the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet, inverted: D . Thus it acquired its name: the Delta.

  Not far from the apex of the Delta, on a plateau to the west of the Nile, lie the fabled pyramids. A few miles further upriver lies the ancient city of Memphis. In the coastal town of Pelusium we booked passage on a boat to take us up the Delta and all the way to Memphis.

  The heat was stifling as we sailed upriver on the crowded boat, passing quaint villages and ancient temples. The rank smell of Delta mud filled my nostrils. I spotted crocodiles in the shallows, heard the call of the ibis and the bellow of hippopotami, and felt very far from my home in Italy.

  Long before Romulus founded Rome, even before the heroes of Homer sacked Troy, the civilization of Egypt was already ancient. Some of the monuments we passed on the riverbank were unimaginably old, and they looked it. Weathered granite slabs depicted animal-headed gods in stiff poses alongside images of the Egyptian kings, called Pharaohs, who wore bizarre headdresses and wielded crooks and flails.

  While I gazed at Egypt passing by, Antipater kept his head down and read about it. During our travels my old tutor had acquired some scrolls of the Histories of Herodotus, including the chapters that described Egypt and its people.

  Along a quiet stretch of the river, we passed a little boy who stood atop the steep bank. I smiled and waved to him. The boy waved back, then hitched up his long, loose garments and relieved himself in the water below. The stream glittered under the bright sunlight and the boy made a game of aiming it this way and that. He grinned and looked quite proud of himself.

  Antipater, poring over a scroll, never looked up.

  “According to Herodotus,” he said, “no one has yet determined the source of the Nile. Those who travel as far as possible upriver, a journey of many months, eventually arrive in a region of vast swamps and impassable forests where the people are all sorcerers; they are also extremely short and as black as ebony, and speak a language incomprehensible to outsiders. Further than that, no traveler has ever ventured and come back alive. Nor, according to Herodotus, can anyone adequately explain why the Nile, unlike all other rivers, is at its lowest in the spring, then floods at the time of the summer solstice.”

  “The solstice is still a few days away,” I said. “I suppose that means we're seeing the Nile at its lowest. Will it actually rise high enough to flood the banks on either side?”

  Antipater looked up, shading his eyes from the bright sunlight. “Hopefully, Gordianus, we shall witness this famous phenomenon for ourselves. The river is said to rise so dramatically that the banks are flooded for hundreds of miles, irrigating a vast amount of cultivated land and creating the most fertile region on earth. The inundation should begin any day now.”

  He returned his attention to the scroll in his lap. “Herodotus goes on to say that, just as the Nile is different from all other rivers, so the people who live along its banks follow customs contrary to other people. The women go to market and carry on trade, while the men stay at home and weave. There are no priestesses, only priests, and while holy men in other lands grow beards and wear their hair long, in Eg
ypt they shave their heads—and every other part of their bodies as well. The Egyptians write from right to left, not left to right. They knead dough with their feet and clay with their hands. They invented the peculiar practice called circumcision. And listen to this: The women make water standing up, while the men do so crouching down!”

  I frowned. “I have to wonder if that's completely accurate. If you'd bothered to look up, you'd have seen that little boy—”

  “I assure you, Gordianus, no historian was ever more scrupulous than Herodotus. He traveled extensively in Egypt, saw everything worth seeing, and consulted all the best authorities.”

  “Yes, but didn't Herodotus write that book over three hundred years ago? The information might be a bit out of date.”

  “My dear boy, there's a reason Herodotus remains our best authority on all matters pertaining to Egypt. No other writer can match his insight and attention to detail. Now, where was I? Ah, yes—on the subject of worship, Herodotus tells us that the Egyptians are the most religious of all people. They can trace their practices back many thousands of years. Since the Egyptians were the first race of mortals, they built the first temples. It was from Egypt that we Greeks received our first knowledge of the gods, though we know them by other names. Thus the Egyptian god Ammon is our Zeus, their Osiris is our Dionysus, Anubis is the same as Hermes, and so on.”

  I frowned. “Isn't Anubis the one who has the head of a dog? Whereas Hermes—or Mercury, as we Romans call him—is a handsome youth; at least that's how the statues in Greek and Roman temples always show him. How can Anubis and Hermes be the same god?”

  “You touch upon a problem which has puzzled even the wisest philosophers. What are we to make of the fact that the Egyptians worship animals, and give animal characteristics to certain gods in their statues and pictures? Some believe their use of such imagery is purely symbolic. Thus, Anubis doesn't really have a dog's head, but is only shown that way because he acts as the loyal guardian of the other gods—their watchdog, so to speak.”

  “I shouldn't think any god would care to have himself depicted as a dog, no matter what the reasoning.”

  “Ah, but that's because you think like a Roman, Gordianus. You look for plain facts and practical solutions. And I think like a Greek; I delight in beauty and hidden meanings. But the Egyptians have their own way of thinking, which often seems quite strange to us, even fantastical. Perhaps it's because they care so little for this world, and so much for the next. They are obsessed with death. Their religion prescribes intricate rituals to safely guide their spirit, or ka, to the Land of the Dead. To achieve this, they must keep their mortal bodies intact. Whereas we cremate our dead, the Egyptians go to great lengths to preserve the corpses of their loved ones and to make them appear as lifelike as possible. The process is called mummification. Those who can afford to do so keep the mummies of their dead relatives in special rooms where they go to visit them, offer them food, and even dine with them, as if they were still alive.”

  “You must be joking!” I said.

  “Romans may wish to rule this world, Gordianus, but Egyptians are far more concerned with the Land of the Dead. We must keep that in mind when at last we see the largest tomb ever built, the Great Pyramid.”

  The Great Pyramid! At last we drew near the final destination of our journey. I had seen all six of the other Wonders now, and would be able to judge for myself whether the Great Pyramid was truly the most marvelous of them all, as many alleged. Could it possibly surpass the soaring height of the Mausoleum, or the splendor of the Temple of Artemis, or the ambition of the fallen Colossus? Everyone on earth had heard of the pyramids, even barbarians in the farthest reaches of Gaul and Scythia. Now I was about to see them.

  * * * *

  The branch of the river on which we were traveling joined with others, growing wider and wider, until all the many branches converged into their common source, the great Nile itself. Suddenly—ahead of us and to the right, shimmering in the distance—I caught my first glimpse of the Great Pyramid. Beside me, Antipater gasped. He, too, was seeing the monument for the first time.

  “Am I seeing double?” I whispered, for it seemed to me that I could see not one but two enormous pyramids.

  “I think not,” said Antipater. “According to Herodotus, there are three major pyramids on the plateau west of the river. One of them is relatively small, but the other is very nearly as large as the Great Pyramid.”

  “They must be enormous!” I said.

  Some of the other passengers on the boat joined us in gaping at the monuments, but others gave them only a glance. The boatmen, for whom the pyramids were an everyday sight, paid them no attention, even as they loomed ever larger to our right.

  Then we passed the plateau and sailed on, and the pyramids receded behind us. A little later we arrived at the ancient capital of Egypt, Memphis.

  The cities of Greece had been foreign to me, but also familiar, for Romans and Greeks worship the same gods and construct the same types of buildings. Babylon had been more exotic, but it was a city in decline, long past its glory. But Memphis—ah, Memphis! This city was truly like another world.

  At first, nothing seemed familiar and I could hardly take in the strangeness of it all—the way the people dressed (I had no names for such garments), the things they ate (I recognized nothing, but the aromas were enticing), the tunes played in the public squares (which sounded like noise to me), the statues of the gods (animal heads, bizarre postures), the colorful picture-writing on the temple walls (beautiful but indecipherable). To be sure, Greek was spoken—by some. The common people spoke another, older language, the likes of which I had never heard before.

  We found accommodations at an inn not far from the river, and were given a room on the upper floor. Antipater complained about the steep steps, but when I opened the shutters and raised my eyes above the nearby rooftops, I saw the Great Pyramid looming in the distance

  Antipater joined me in gazing at the sight. “Wonderful!” he whispered.

  “Shall we set out to see it at once?” I said eagerly.

  “No, no!” said Antipater. “The day is far too hot, and the hour too late, and I need my rest.”

  “Rest? All you did today was lie in the boat and read Herodotus!”

  “How lucky you are to be nineteen, Gordianus. Someday you'll understand how an old man can grow tired simply by drawing a day's ration of breath. Leave the shutters open, but draw the curtains. It's time for my nap.”

  * * * *

  We did not go to see the pyramids that day, or the next, or even the next. Antipater insisted that we acquaint ourselves with the city of Memphis first. To be sure, it was a place of marvels, decorated with shrines, temples, ceremonial gates, colossal stone statues, and towering obelisks the likes of which I had never seen before, all constructed on an enormous scale. The strange architecture of the city exuded an air of mystery and great antiquity. It was easy to believe that mortals had been living and building in this spot since the beginning of time.

  Memphis was no longer the capital of Egypt—the heir of Alexander the Great, Ptolemy, had chosen to move the royal administration to Alexandria—but its monuments were well kept, and the city was bustling and vibrant. I had thought that in Egypt we would arrive at the edge of the world, but Memphis seemed to be its center, the crossroads of all the earth. Among the people I saw every shade of hair color and complexion; I had never known that mortals came in so many hues. The city seemed at once impossibly ancient and incredibly alive.

  We dined on tilapia and exotic fruits in the palm grove next to the Temple of Selene (who is also Aphrodite, according to Antipater). We observed the sacred Apis bull dozing in its luxurious enclosure; it seemed quite strange to me that a mere animal should be treated as a god. But the grandest of the temples was that of Serapis, the god most favored by the Ptolemy dynasty. To reach it, we traversed a broad ceremonial walkway lined on both sides by life-sized statues of a creature with the head of a man and th
e body of a lion. These, Antipater explained, were sphinxes.

  “Like the sphinx that guarded the Greek city of Thebes and posed the famous riddle to Oedipus?” I asked. Antipater himself had taught me the story.

  “I suppose. But if Oedipus truly met a sphinx, the creature must have come from Egypt. No Greek I know has ever seen a sphinx, but their images are all over Egypt. These statues look as if they've been here forever.”

  The long walkway was exposed to a strong wind from the west, and drifts of sand, some quite high, had gathered around the bases of the statues. One of the sphinxes was buried up to its chin, so that sand covered the lower portion of its nemes headdress and its long, narrow beard. I paused to look at the sphinx's enigmatic face, and recalled the famous riddle: What creature in the morning goes on four legs, at midday on two, and in the evening on three? Had Oedipus given the wrong reply, the sphinx would have strangled him, but he deduced the answer: Man, who first crawls on all fours, then strides on two feet, then walks with a cane.

  At every turn we were accosted by men who offered to serve as guides to the local sites. Antipater eventually picked the one who struck him as the least unscrupulous and charged the man with arranging our transportation to the pyramids. The guide, who spoke passable Greek, advised us to wait awhile longer, for soon a three-day festival to celebrate the summer solstice would claim the attention of all the locals and tourists in the city; during those three days we might be able to visit the pyramids in peace, without hordes of sightseers around us. The guide also insisted that we buy long white robes and linen headdresses not unlike those worn by the sphinxes, saying that such garments would protect us from the desert heat.

  At last, early on the appointed morning, dressed in our desert apparel, we set out to see the pyramids.

  The guide supplied a camel for each of us—to my dismay, for I had yet to meet a camel that did not dislike me on sight. This beast was no different. Almost at once, he tried to bite me. The guide chastised the camel by striking him soundly on his enormous nose. After that the creature seemed content merely to turn his long neck, give me a baleful stare, and spit at me from time to time. Despite his sullen nature, the camel was an obedient mount, and we made steady progress.