by Dana Fredsti
The men in the chamber looked to her in surprise. Like the professor she was, Hypatia slipped effortlessly into her role as lecturer.
“Every night for generations, we of the Museion have taken astrolabe readings of the stars. Over the years, much of that precious information has been lost—to fire, to earthquakes and floods, and… other disasters…”
She and Orestes exchanged knowing looks. He had been there with her when the gleeful mob in black robes had destroyed the Serapeum and its library. It made every surviving book in Alexandria incalculably precious, now even more than ever.
“Still, we have the studies of Ptolemy, and Hipparchus before him. From them we know how to calculate the motion of the heavens.
“As you know, our earth lies at the center of the universe. Surrounding us is the cosmic sphere of the heavens, which rotates around us. But there is more. Long ago, noble Hipparchus discovered that the celestial sphere does not merely rotate around us, but very slowly over time, also tilts its axis as it turns. We call this second movement the precession of the equinoxes. By pinpointing the positions of the Sun, Moon, and particular stars, we may follow the precession—track the movement of the celestial sphere around us.”
“And this knowledge aids us in our current crisis?”
“Indeed, Prefect. You see, through this, we can also track the movement of time.” She nodded to Aspasius, who brought a star chart to the table. Drawing their attention to a particular point, she began again. “This is Spica, the brightest star of the constellation Virgo. Last night I took Spica’s measurements.” With her finger on the point indicating Spica, she traced an arc leading a hand’s breadth away. “Now Spica lies… here. After the Wrath-Fall, it moved twenty-three and three-quarter degrees in a single night.”
Orestes nodded, remembering the astronomy lessons she had taught him.
“How long would it normally take for the celestial sphere to traverse nearly twenty-four degrees?”
“If Ptolemy is correct,” Hypatia said, “the normal precession of the stars moves but a single degree every century.”
“What? Then we are…” he struggled to complete the incredible thought. “…hundreds of years removed from our own time?”
“Thousands, actually. We are not in the distant past, Prefect. We are in the distant future.”
* * *
Hypatia spent the remainder of the afternoon advising the prefect on other serious problems facing Alexandria. When she and Aspasius finally returned by chariot to their simple quarters at the Museion, both were exhausted, but their work was not yet finished. They still had to record their nightly astrolabe readings. So the pair retired to the rooftop to eat a small dinner of dried figs and flatbread while they waited for the constellations to make their appearance.
The stars above were reassuring in their silent brilliance, Hypatia mused. Below them, however, the discordant sounds of fear and discord echoing from the streets were less comforting, promising only strife, chaos, and barely contained violence. She shuddered, knowing that bloodshed loomed.
Modest as it was, Hypatia had little appetite for her evening meal, so a serving girl cleared her portion and brought up a drinking bowl of Cretan wine. The philosopher drank thoughtfully.
This may be the last I ever sip of this vintage, she mused. How many amphorae of Cretan wine did they have left? Did the island of Crete even exist any longer? No ships had arrived—from anywhere. Was Alexandria the only city spared by the Wrath-Fall? Were they the last people left on the Earth?
Was the end of the world truly at hand?
“Mistress?” Aspasius asked gently. “I think it is dark enough to conduct the readings now, if you wish.” She looked up at his worried face and smiled at his concern.
“Dear Aspasius, it has been a long day, hasn’t it? Yes, let’s finish up and get some much-needed rest.” He took his place with the logbook, and she took up the astrolabe and turned toward Virgo to find Spica.
“Oh!” she cried in surprise. A new light in the south caught her eye. It was part of no constellation she knew, too low to be Venus, too bright to be Jupiter.
She put down the astrolabe.
“Aspasius, come see this.”
Setting down his stylus, he joined her, sharing in her surprise.
“What can it be, Mistress? Not a wandering star, surely.”
“No, nor a falling star. It isn’t falling.”
“But it is moving.” Aspasius stretched out a finger.
She looked closer. He was right.
It was moving toward them.
The two stood in rapt attention, spellbound by the growing light in the sky. As it drew close enough to be seen by the naked eye, Hypatia could hear the gasps of the crowds in the streets below as it circled overhead. Then all could see that it was no star, but rather a great bird of brilliant fire.
“The Phoenix!” the people shouted. “The Phoenix!”
24
The Western Desert,
Somewhere East of the Egyptian–Libyan Border
Formerly July 21, 1977 A.D.
Seven days after the Event
From a vulture’s eye view, the Libyan armored personnel carrier—a second-hand Russian army vehicle—looked like a scrappy little beetle bumbling its way over the surface of a sun-baked giant’s hand. Tareq Ali, the unit’s corporal, leaned out the top hatch, obsessively scanning the horizon with his grit-flecked binoculars. Heat waves distorted the view of the desert in every direction.
Sighing, Tareq put down the binoculars to consult his faded military map, laid out flat on the roof of the APC and weighed down with a wrench and three rocks. The outdated chart was of limited help—its details scant to begin with, the sun-bleached paper worn away in tiny diamond-shaped holes where the folds crossed.
Khazoog, Tareq thought. It was a uniquely Libyan word, used for those occasions when what seemed like an irresistible deal or an ideal situation wound up screwing you over so bad that you were left even worse off than you had been before. For instance, when a cross-border raid on a hardscrabble Egyptian town left you stranded somewhere in enemy territory, utterly lost.
A calendar hung inside their APC, with a smiling photograph of Muammar Gaddafi. According to that, they had left before dawn on July 21, 1977, with the 9th Tank Battalion of the People’s Army of the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. The heroes had left home to wild cheers, eager to counter the treachery of Anwar Sadat, who threatened to attack the proud free Libyan people and kowtow to the Zionists, besides being a puppet of the Great Satan, Jimmy Carter. Victory was assured.
The American CIA must have tipped off the Egyptians.
Tareq’s memory of the first hour of the nighttime raid was crystal clear and deliriously happy, until the screams of approaching fighter jets cut through the air, along with the kettle drum booming of fire from the Egyptian tank divisions. Then his memories were a blur of exploding tanks and APCs as their battalion dissolved into fireballs and scattered wreckage.
“Evasive! Floor it!” he had shouted down to Mahmoud, the driver. The wily Berber hadn’t needed to be told—he was already cutting away at a sharp angle, aiming for the cover of the low ridges to the south. They’d sped through a gauntlet of exploding tank fire, so many blasts that the sky was lit up as bright as noontime. When they’d reached the cover of a nearby wadi they just kept going, putting as much distance as they could between themselves and the thundering hellscape behind them.
The last thing he remembered about that terrifying run for their lives was watching the enemy’s final volley—peering out the hatch at the sheltering rock walls of the wadi, seeing the flashing lightning storm overhead. It seemed to go on forever. The terrible sound it made, like the roar of a giant ifrit being squeezed to death between two mountains, brought him to the floor of the APC, arms wrapped around his head.
Then suddenly, all was silent.
No jets streaked overhead. No guns fired. No motors revved. The pre-dawn dark was no
w glorious sun.
They were alone.
* * *
It only made sense to avoid the coast. The northern approaches would be crawling with the enemy. Their best chance was to veer south and slip back across the border at some remote spot.
Yet a week later, he and his crew still had only a vague idea of where they were, and no idea where anyone else was. There was no trace of battle, no sign of jets, no tread or tire tracks but their own. In fact, there was no sign of any human activity whatsoever. Tareq was baffled.
He gave up on the map and went down to check on Mahmoud.
“Radio still fucked?” he asked the Berber.
“Radio still fucked.”
“How’s the gas holding up?”
“I’d say we have another three hundred miles, easy. It’s the water I worry about.”
Tareq nodded. Gasoline was far cheaper than water. He offered Mahmoud his canteen.
“Here, take a swig. It’ll help with the drive.” It was filled with Bokha, a batch of his homemade fermented fig moonshine. Mahmoud took it gratefully.
“Shukran.”
Tareq accepted it back, taking a drink himself. Giving Mahmoud a gentle clap on the shoulder, he left the stoic Berber to his driving while he went to the slightly-less-stifling interior of the vehicle.
In the troop compartment, the four other soldiers were playing cards for the last of their Chinese cigarettes. Jerry cans and Cyrillic-covered ammo crates served double-duty as table and chairs.
“Hey, you fucking sons of whores,” Tareq said. “What do we have left to eat?”
“Your sister’s vagina,” Hamza replied, concentrating on the game.
“Used Jew condoms,” Feryel suggested.
“Dead dog pus,” Abdallah proposed.
“My shit,” Ahmed offered.
“They all sound so delicious,” Tareq said absently, preoccupied with his search through some likely-looking tins. He pried back the lid of a plastic tub and gave it an exploratory sniff, instantly regretting it.
“What is this?” he asked.
“It was the last of the camel meat, but I think it’s rotten now,” Abdallah said. Tareq made a face and tossed the whole thing out the upper hatch. He kept rifling through the cargo until he found a box of Soviet army rations. He sighed and settled for one of the suspiciously unappetizing-looking blocks. It tasted foul.
Feryel slapped down his hand. “I call. Four jacks.” A spontaneous chorus of groans erupted.
“Damn your worthless baby dick!”
“Allah give you crabs, you filthy goat humper!”
“Allah smite your whole family with ass leprosy!”
Mahmoud suddenly called out from the front. “Tareq! Dust cloud! We have company!”
The corporal popped his head topside. The others gathered around, looking up at him. He didn’t need the binoculars.
“Ya salaam…” he murmured as if in a trance.
“Tanks?” asked Hamza.
Tareq nodded. “Lots.”
“Theirs or ours?”
“Way too many to be ours.”
The soldiers looked at each other.
“Khazoog,” Feryel said.
Abdallah nodded, biting his thumbnail. “Khazoog.”
25
The temple of Sobek-Ra, Shedyet, Egypt
Morning – Three days after the Event
Enkati awoke on a cold stone floor, alone, aching, and afraid. A single panel of light shone through a sliver of a window. A tiny drain in the floor stank horribly. Other than that and a stout door of thick Lebanese cedar, the tiny chamber was featureless. Morning had come, judging from the daylight streaming through the notch in the wall.
Were his brother and shipmates being held in cells like this one? He tried tapping on the walls, shouting until his throat grew raw, but no sounds seemed to escape his tomb-like prison. He could hear nothing of the outside world except the eerie moan of the hot Egyptian wind when it slipped through the window slit.
Once he thought he detected the sound of footsteps, and sat against the door, pressing his ear against it. Nothing. It must have been his imagination.
Then something clattered in the lock, the sound of a heavy bolt being lifted and slid back. Enkati crab-walked away just as the door swung open. A pair of soldiers and a gaunt priest with a cadaverous glare stood in the dark corridor outside. One soldier held up a lit torch, the other ducked his head inside the cell, and seemed surprised to see Enkati there. He turned back to the priest.
“The boy?”
“He is no boy. It is only his fleshly disguise. Take him.”
The soldier nodded, entered the chamber, and seized Enkati by the arm, hauling him into the corridor.
He kept his iron grip on the boy’s arm as they marched in silence through the dark labyrinth of cells. Enkati wondered again if his brother and shipmates lay behind any of the closed doors they passed. The path they followed ended in a large, open chamber—a work space of some kind, with about a dozen large stone tables. A variety of tools covered a long side table—trays, rods, measuring instruments, hooks and knives, and more. Shelves filled with a range of different-sized jars and amphora covered the walls. The air smelled of spices and natron salts.
There was a girl lying face-up on one of the stone tables. Older than him by a few years, very beautiful, and—like him—wearing almost nothing, only a cloth wrap around her loins. She seemed to be in a trance, head lolling back and forth as she muttered unintelligibly. Another priest, his face hidden behind a large black mask of Anubis, approached her, carrying a bowl. Anubis, the jackal-headed god.
The god of the dead. The god of embalming.
“What is happening to her?” Enkati asked the soldier.
“Quiet,” the man growled, staring at the girl’s long legs.
Their own gloomy priest handed a small ivory flask to Enkati.
“Drink.”
The youth took it gingerly, and took a small sip. It was thick and syrupy, and tasted awful. He choked, spraying the concoction everywhere and enraging the old priest.
“Pour it down his throat!” he shrieked. “Use a funnel if you have to!” The soldier grabbed him by the ear and reached for the little flask.
“No, wait!” Enkati cried. “I’ll drink it.” Quickly bringing it to his lips, he feigned a deep pull of the stuff, though most remained in the bottle. Then he handed it back to the scowling priest.
“Put him on the table!” he ordered. The soldier was quick to obey.
Once he was prone, Enkati stealthily turned his head toward the girl, watching as the priest in the Anubis mask carefully painted her body with fragrant oils, drawing lines of sacred hieroglyphics. She lay very still, moaning faintly.
“Never mind the girl!” his priest snapped. He clapped his hands and a slave fetched a woven screen, hiding the girl’s table from Enkati’s view. The priest likewise vanished.
A few moments later the gaunt man returned wearing an Anubis mask of his own—the jackal head looked ridiculous on his skinny frame. He, too, had brought a bowl and brush, and set to work inscribing hieroglyphics on Enkati’s skin.
Chagrined that the “fragrant” oils being used to anoint him with were primarily fish oils, and foul-smelling ones at that, Enkati was still careful to act the part of a drugged victim. In fact, his head was starting to spin, his ears filling with a strange hornet’s buzz. Still, he fought to keep his wits, and to hide any trace of the battle being waged within his own skull.
He peered sidelong, wishing he could spy on the girl. Behind the screen, suggestive shadows only hinted at what her priest was up to. Her moans became more intense, but also more muffled. It wasn’t a comforting sound.
The priest’s brushstrokes tickled the skin of his chest and limbs, and the whole process felt strange and uncomfortably intimate. The smell of the fish oil was overpowering.
The girl fell silent now.
Finally, his priest finished the inscriptions and stepped away from th
e table, again disappearing from sight.
Now is my only chance, Enkati thought, peering furtively to see if the soldiers were still there. They were, watching him like a hawk. He groaned softly, continuing the pretense of a drugged trance.
The priest returned, this time with a large reed basket which he set next to Enkati’s head. Moving to the foot of the table, he took hold of the youth’s ankles—Enkati almost flinched at the unpleasant man’s touch—bringing both legs snug together, and then began wrapping them with strips of linen. Like a spider enfolding a fly in silk, he continued to swathe the youth’s body. Beads of sweat covered Enkati’s brow, and his arms began to tremble.
Ra save me. They are mummifying me.
He strained to keep his arms tensed, muscles tight in order to make as much room as he could under the wraps. His heart raced as the priest lifted his head, to cover his throat, then his mouth, then his nose. His breathing came shallow and fast, and he thought he would smother there on the table, but the gauzy linen allowed him air.
Another turn of the bandages covered his eyes, and he fought to stay calm despite his growing terror. At last, the final twist of the wrapping was pinned down and the priest lay Enkati’s swaddled head back on the table.
“Let the Reverend Father know all is in readiness.”
Then all went silent. Cocooned, Enkati lay still as a corpse, listening intently for the priests or soldiers, but the room sounded empty. Taking a chance, he began twisting his body back and forth to work his arms free. No one made any attempt to stop him. There was the slightest amount of give in the wrapping, so he strained his arms and rolled his shoulders to make the most of it, but it didn’t help. The bindings stayed tight.
Heat built up under the layers of the cloth, his exertions making it harder to breathe. He rolled to his side and tried to rub the linen against the surface of the table and away from his face. A slight imperfection in the stone caught on a corner of his blindfold, peeling it back ever so slightly.
He could see, albeit only a little bit.
The screen had been put away. The girl lay on her table, a would-be mummy like him. Then the door opened, and the soldiers and Anubis-priests returned. Enkati froze, slowly rolling himself back into position. Careful not to move, he felt hands lift him and carry him out the room. They proceeded down the darkened hallway. Peering over, he could make out the shape of the bundled girl being carried alongside him.