"Oh, yes, that," Peter said, giving perfect indication of not being any more favorably disposed toward that theory of Gil's than he ever had. In the same instant, he obviously got the point Gil had been trying to put across, because he smiled rather sheepishly. “Yes, I guess I see what you mean about mixing pleasure and business,” he said, looking very appealing as the rays of the rising sun continued to lighten the sky above them.
"Well, with that said, shall we begin our trip down?” Gil suggested, sensing more than seeing the grateful look Mohammed cast in their direction.
"I do think I should make one thing perfectly clear,” Peter said, apparently thinking Mohammed's chagrin at the continued delay could be salved sufficiently by a sizable gratuity at the finish. “I still have all intentions of fucking you silly and having you do the exact same to me."
Gil felt a flush of definite embarrassment. There could be no denying that he was pleased to hear that Peter still wanted sex even after discovering the two were professional rivals. Considering the length of time they'd officially known each other, Peter's ongoing desire probably owed more to frustrated animal-in-heat than it did to anything else, but that didn't entirely remove its pleasurable aspects. Peter, after all, was a very attractive man, certainly more attractive than any other man Gil had had in his life, even counting all of the men that had resulted from Gil's recent duck-to-swan transformation. He turned from Peter, afraid it was becoming too obvious that Gil might be on the verge of a school-boy-like crush. He felt a jolt of electricity as Peter's hand suddenly took a firm grip on his arm and pulled Gil none too gently into body-to-body contact. “I do not kiss and fuck every damned man I happen to meet,” Peter said, his eyes flashing from a face whose expression was all seriousness. He released his handhold, leaving a tingling sensation where his fingers had gripped.
They proceeded down the gargantuan stairway—a descent presenting more wear and tear to their asses than to any other parts of their anatomy; their's was a required a series of sits and slides designed to prevent forward tumbles that would have bounced them tragically to the bottom. It was nowhere nearly as exhausting as going up. When they got to the bottom, Gil didn't even need a brief pause before beginning the short trek to their parked car. Peter remained momentarily behind to pacify not only Mohammed but a scowling member of the tourist police who appeared out of seeming nowhere. Gil wasn't sure he could blame the policeman for obvious testiness. The area, after all, was already beginning to fill with its day's quota of people, most of whom were probably aware that three men had been climbing on a pyramid distinctly posted against just that. Gil felt confident, though, that Peter would take care of it.
He was still pleasurably flushed from his near sexual encounter with Peter when he saw the man and the horses a few yards from the car. Not that any man with three horses was such an uncommon sight there. Horses and camels, plus those in charge of selling rides on them to tourists, were usually the first to arrive in the morning and the last to leave at night. What was distinctive about this grouping were horses that were extremely beautiful, even in a country known for its purebred Arabian stock; the man looked strangely familiar. His smile, framed by his neatly trimmed beard, silently beckoned Gil, unlike that of a mere hawker of wares who would have been screaming at the top of his lungs in invitation for Gil to take the ride of his life. Automatically, Gil veered in the Arab's direction, telling himself he was drawn more to the animals than to the darkly attractive man who held their reins.
Gil stopped at the gray stallion with large eyes the color of black velvet. “And there's a particularly handsome stud!” the Arab said, looking at Gil and not at the stallion. Gil had the good grace to smile at the harmless flattery. He laid one hand on the animal's muzzle, stroking the short gray hair, finding the horse, in fact all of the Arab's horses, of a quality beyond what might be expected, considering the equestrian skills of tourists visiting Giza. “I thought maybe you might like to ride,” the Arab said, his voice low and striking a familiar chord somewhere in Gil's mind, although Gil told himself he must be imagining it. He hadn't been to Giza on this trip except today, and he certainly couldn't have remembered one person out of so many seen on his last trip through. “The horse is gentle, despite not having been gelded; a rare temperament, to be sure,” the Arab assured. “His breeding can be traced back to the stables of a sultan of Turkey."
"Which is further than I can trace mine,” Gil said with a nervous laugh. He didn't know why, but this Arab was making him decidedly uneasy. Not that the man was coming on with a typical hard sell, because he wasn't. Not that the man's earlier compliment had been in leering bad taste, either, because it hadn't. It certainly didn't matter that the Arab lied about the horse's pedigree; it was hardly likely that an animal whose lineage could be traced back to the stables of some Turkish sultan would be subjected to the inexpert handling of tourists whose idea of a good ride was a slow walk from parking lot to pyramids. What made Gil ill at ease was a sense that he was seeing a scenario wherein everything might look perfectly in place but in which something was definitely askew. “How much for an hour ride?” he asked, realizing the man's eyes were just as darkly enticing as those of the horse Gil still petted.
"Surely you'd like more than just a short hour,” the Arab chided, suddenly sounding more a salesman. “There's a place I know in the desert that I think you would enjoy going to more than you would enjoy threading your way through the crowds apt to be here in a few minutes’ time."
Gil was saved from answering by Peter up behind him. Gil turned, not just sure what he was suddenly reading on Peter's face. Gil eyed Peter and then the Arab.
"I didn't realize the two of you had met,” Peter said, his voice holding just a hint of coolness that Gil hadn't heard there previously. His insinuation that Gil knew the horseman was ludicrous.
"Actually, this gentleman and I haven't met—officially,” the Arab said, smiling to reveal teeth that seemed startlingly white in contrast to his black beard, black mustache, and his dark complexion. “Perhaps, Peter, you would be so kind as to do the honors of officially introducing us?"
"Of course,” Peter said, his voice carrying a certain edge that Gil hadn't yet been able to define to satisfaction. “Sheikh Abdul Jerada, may I present Gil Goldsands."
Gil remembered why Sheikh Jerada was so familiar. Not only had his name been brought up by Peter as the owner of the peregrine falcon in the Hilton Hotel lobby, but he was the man who Gil had almost run down on his way to the hotel elevator. “I'm very pleased to meet you, Mr. Goldsands,” Abdul said with a slight bow. “It's always a pleasure to bump into you, if you'll excuse that very poor pun.” Gil couldn't help laughing. This made the sheikh laugh, too. The slight tension between them was dispelled, but Gil still had to deal with tension building in another quarter. Peter wasn't laughing. He wasn't even smiling. He was eyeing them curiously, much like a scientist examined two unpredictable microbes under a microscope. “I took the liberty of bringing horses, Peter,” Abdul said, “having learned from the people at your hotel that you and Mr. Goldsands were pyramid-climbing this morning. I thought maybe you'd both do me the pleasure of joining me for a short ride, followed by lunch."
"I don't recall telling anyone at the hotel where we were going this morning,” Peter said, none too friendly.
"Yes, well,” Abdul replied with a shrug. “If your guide knew, and your driver knew, and the tourist police knew, you might safely assume a good many others knew, too."
"I see,” Peter answered, but he still sounded as though he considered the sheikh's presence an intrusion.
"Then, how about that ride and lunch?” Abdul asked. If he noticed Peter's hostile attitude, he was apparently more than willing to overlook it.
"Unfortunately, we've a car and driver here,” Peter said, obviously not warming to any of Abdul's overtures.
"A small gratuity will quickly enough send the one on his way with the other ... no bad feelings, don't you agree?” the sheikh said;
a slight wink indicated that a little money could grease all sorts of potentially annoying gears even if ... say ... someone wanted to climb a pyramid despite all postings against it. “Shall I save you the bother by taking care of it for you?"
"That won't be necessary,” Peter replied, not giving any indication that he intended to take care of it himself, either. “Actually, I'm not sure Gil is all that much of a horseman."
"No formal training,” Gil jumped in. “Not like most of those men you probably know back home, Peter, who belong to the horsy set and had horses in lieu of prams. But I've had enough practical experience to get from one point to another without too many saddle sores—providing, of course, the distance between points A and B isn't overly far."
"Well, I stand thereby informed!” Peter said with a humorless smirk.
Gil reluctantly had to admit that his quick assurance to the sheikh, that Gil was a competent rider, might be misconstrued to indicate that Gil might, thereby, prefer spending his last day in Cairo in company other than just Peter. This certainly wasn't the case. Oh, the ride did sound fun. So did the offer of lunch, since the pyramid climb had gone from making Gil sick to making him hungry. But there was something to the old adage about two being company and three a crowd. “Maybe, though, I'd better pass,” he said. “No matter how I feel now, it would be ridiculous to overdo. I'm not as young as I once was, after all."
"Although you look the epitome of youth and good health to me, you certainly would know best,” Abdul said magnanimously. Peter looked genuinely pleased. Gil felt he had definitely done the right thing. “Although I was rather looking forward to showing off Hatshepsût,” the sheikh added. Gil knew immediately, just by noting the sudden change that came over Peter, that Abdul's reference had little to do with the New Kingdom woman pharaoh of that name who had assumed male trappings, complete with ceremonial false beard, to rule Egypt in the Eighteen Dynasty. “My trainers are flying her in the desert outside Saqqâra this morning,” Abdul said, seemingly all innocence. “I'd thought that since Peter was so taken by the little lady.... “He shrugged, as if to indicate that even the best laid plans of mice and men were sometimes passed up out of necessity.
"Yes, I'm sorry, too,” Peter said, “but Gil is definitely right. He shouldn't chance overdoing things.” However, his words were too little, too late. Gil had seen all he had needed to see when Abdul Jerada had mentioned that precious bird of his. At that precise moment, Gil had watched himself suddenly become the furthest thing from Peter's mind. Peter's mind's-eye had gone soaring off into the desert sky over Saqqâra. In that instant, he seemed to become as much a part of that hawk as the bells attached to her legs.
"On the other hand, how often does a guy get invited to morning rides and lunches by exotic desert sheikhs?” Gil said, damned if he was going to pass up this opportunity and, instead, spend time with someone who would have been bemoaning lost visions of a hawk every single moment of the day. “And it's more than obvious that Peter would never forgive himself, or me, if he missed his chance to see little Hatshepsût in action. Right, Peter?” he asked.
Peter looked guilty as charged.
CHAPTER FOUR
HOW INCONGRUOUS—those sounds like ice cubes tinkling against fine crystal! For the heat would have melted real ice. Yet the sounds remained, carried on the stillness of the desert morning.
There was clarity to the desert air, and Gil could gaze for miles, picking out faraway landmarks that seemed so near yet were so far. It was therefore easy for him to pinpoint the source of the sound: two tiny bells, one a semitone in pitch above the other that together produced the audible discord. They had originally come from the Lahore region of Pakistan, made by an ancient process that gave light but good repercussion by means of the striking of an irregular clapper against the metal of the bell. They were for wear by a peregrine falcon, designed to be attached to short leather strips—bewits—one of which rode each leg. Smaller bells were used on tiercels—smaller ones yet on kestrels, merlins and sparrowhawks. The peregrine in possession of these particular bells soared on those air currents that were active above the ground but that left the desert sand in undisturbed stillness.
There were some people born with a hereditary tone deafness that disallowed them clear hearing of those sounds emitted by hawk bells—a decided disadvantage to any falconer needing to locate a hawk whose flight had ended in deep cover. There was, however, no need to worry about cover here, for there was none. On all sides stretched a seemingly endless sea of sand. It was somehow fitting that the largest continuous wasteland on the face of the earth, extending east and west between the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea, north and south between the Sudan and the Mediterranean, embracing an area of over 3,500,000 square miles, should most often be called by the redundant Sahara Desert—sahara meaning “desert” in Arabic. It was, however, a mistake to think of the Sahara as only a continuous monotony of undulating sand, for it enclosed extensive plateaus and sterile rock-strewn plains. It was not sandy everywhere, but it was sandy at and around Saqqâra. That city of the dead, necropolis to the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis, wasn't immediately visible to Gil, but the airborne peregrine could see all fourteen pyramids and hundreds of mastabas and tombs dating from the First to the Thirtieth Dynasty. Picked from Saqqâra's ruins had been the oldest known mummy and the oldest papyrus ever found. For Gil, it was decidedly apropos that the name of the place derived from the Arabic sakr, meaning “hawk".
Hatshepsût, hawk named for a long-dead queen of Egypt, was a queen in her own right, regal as she surveyed her domain, subtly shifting on the wind, sometimes maneuvering so smoothly that she achieved a silence without bells. Her back, wings, and tail were bluish gray, the feathers barred with a darker tint. Her crown, neck and a spot below each eye were nearly black. Her throat was white with dark longitudinal lines; her brats, belly and legs were white with dark bars. Her wings, now open, could fold almost to the tip of her tail. On occasion, she came between those who watched her and the sun, and sparks of sunlight telegraphed through her end feathers, which she imperceptivity adjusted to coast through the blue Egyptian skies.
There was a beauty and grace to her movements, a power and strength, a speed and a style, that had made her species coveted by falconers in Eastern countries long before the sport was to become ancient in central Europe or Great Britain. Even Gil could admire the aesthetic grace and beauty, the oneness of the bird with her surroundings. Under certain conditions, there would have been a tragic beauty even to the kill, for it was the nature of things that some hunted and others were hunted—a balance nature strove always to achieve in the end. But whatever beauty was present this day, it was marred by the interference of men upon the scene. For Hatshepsût, though she seemed free, was, in reality, anchored to men on the ground by an invisible umbilical cord that tampered with the natural scheme of things. Even her latest victim, a pigeon caught mid-flight with a force that sent a showering of white feathers earthward, wouldn't have kept its appointment with destiny if it hadn't been frightened into flight by human hands shaking it from a wicker cage.
"You don't approve,” Abdul said, not having missed the fact that Gil had once again turned his head away. They were sitting in the shade offered by an awning outstretched from the entrance of a large Bedouin tent that had been set up to accommodate lunch preparations and provide comfort for the sheikh and his guests.
"I guess I find myself empathizing with the hawk's loss of real freedom,” Gil said, knowing it would be quite futile to go into objections in much depth. He had learned from experience that hawking, like bullfighting, had its attackers and its defenders, and seldom, if ever, did the two meet on common ground.
"Really, you should rejoice for her,” Abdul said, his attention thoroughly on Gil and not on the peregrine who had grounded her prey and was crouching triumphantly on the kill, “for she has the best of care, is well fed and provided for, has few of the trials and tribulations of her counterparts in the wild."
"Ah,” Abdul said, as if Gil had indeed made a good point. However, his follow-up was such that Gil knew the Arab had no more been converted than Peter had; Peter even then out there in the blistering desert heat with the bird's trainer, watching Hatshepsût be recalled to the fist for another cast. “Perhaps, I can amuse you some other way?” Abdul said, completely changing the subject. “You've seen Saqqâra, I suppose. Still, if you don't mind seeing it again, it's but a short ride from here, and there's time before lunch."
"Places once seen are always seen differently and certainly more completely with another person,” Gil said, remembering how Peter had used just that argument in an attempt to claim Gil for a day of sightseeing. This day, as a matter of fact. “Usually things shared are the more memorable,” Gil added, just as Peter had added; Peter had surrendered seeing things with Gil to watch a falcon hunt desert skies.
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