E.Godz

Chapter Fourteen

No one was waiting at Chicago's O'Hare Airport to meet Dov. That was annoying. The last he'd heard, he was supposed to be picked up at Baggage by someone named William Montrose who would be easily identifiable because he'd be holding up a sign with Dov's name on it.

There were plenty of people with signs waiting near Baggage, but not one of the signs said dov godz or any variation thereof.

"I don't like the smell of this," Dov muttered down the front of his shirt.

"You should try the smell in here," Ammi replied. "Man, if you can't shower twice a day while you're traveling, would you at least consider shaving your chest? I know we've been through this before, but come on, man, it's a jungle in here! One where a whole lot of tigers have been wrestling in dead—"

"Shut up." Dov whipped out his cell phone and fired off a ring in the direction of the Temple of Seshat-by-the-Shore. He wrapped an insulating spell around it so that it would cause the phone on the receiving end of the call to ring at the decibel level of a Heavy Metal band. The selfsame spell would also make Dov's summons shoot straight through any call-waiting or call-screening devices like a bullet through butter.

The phone rang once and only once before someone answered. That was usually about all it took.

"Who in the blessed Afterlife is this?" a harried male voice boomed.

"Are you Ray Rah?" Dov barked.

"I am. Who are you and what did you do to my phone?"

"Why ... don't ... you ... just ... guess?" Dov said slowly, between gritted teeth. He was feeling more than a little testy and he had no qualms about letting it show.

"Oh!" A gasp of embarrassment filled the phone. Good. Dov wanted his neglectful host to suffer.

"Is that all you can say? I've been standing in this baggage claim area for an hour," he lied.

"But the last we heard from you, your plane wasn't supposed to get in until now."

"Ever hear of someone taking an earlier flight? Or even of a flight getting in early?"

"Yes, but this is Chicago-O'Hare we're talking about and—"

"And even if I did come in at my original arrival time, which is now, so what? There's still no one here to meet me!" Dov was piling it on heavy and enjoying doing it. He had not had a good flight from Seattle. There was bad weather over the Rockies, the first- class cabin ran out of the Pinot Grigio he'd ordered and he'd had to make do with Chardonnay, and the coffee they'd served tasted so dreadfully ... weak. He knew he shouldn't have felt quite so homicidal over something as ordinary as coffee, but this was a commonplace, documented reaction among people who had spent more than fifteen minutes in Seattle. Medical journals called it "bean lag."

Perhaps it was unwise of him to take out his irritability on someone whose support he'd come here to woo. Dov was aware that his snippy behavior might alienate the leader of the Chicago group, but the possibility didn't faze him. He placed absolute trust in his own charisma, sure that no matter how badly he antagonized someone, he had the power to convert any foe into a friend by the judicious application of charm. It might take a little time to undo this bit of preliminary damage, but what was time to him? He had plenty to spare.

Besides, if you made someone feel guilty and then forgave them, even when they hadn't done anything so bad in the first place, they became a little less likely to take you for granted, a lot more likely to jump when you said "frog." By Dov's calculations, Rah Ray should be just about ready to offer an intense, humiliating apology for leaving a top executive from E. Godz, Inc. stranded at the airport in so barbarous a fashion. He grinned at the phone and waited for the inevitable groveling.

It did not come. Instead, to his shock, he heard a hearty chuckle in his ear. "Oh, I see what happened. I had Billy-hotep down to pick you up, only then we all decided to do this lovely ceremony and I sent him out for extra pomegranates. You can't have enough pomegranates when you're trying to get Isis to pay attention. You do know how important it is that the rites of Isis be properly performed, don't you, Mr. Godz?"

"Uh ... I mean, yes; yes, of course I do. What do you take me for, an ignoramus?" Dov tried to lob the guilt back into Ray Rah's court, but the man wasn't even in the game.

"Of course you do! Doesn't everyone? I guess what happened is that I just got a little carried away and double-booked Billy-hotep. I mean, you can't be in two places at once until after you're dead, right? It happens. I'll tell you what: It's too late to send someone for you now. There's so much left to do before the ceremony if we're going to have everything ready in time, and I'm a little shorthanded. This happens whenever I schedule a holy rite for the same day as a Cubs game. Okay, so you nab a cab, get a receipt, and I'll reimburse you for it as soon as you get here. Unless you want to hold onto it yourself as a business expense, for taxes?"

Dov snapped his phone shut without another word and wished it were an old- fashioned desktop model of 1940's vintage. You just couldn't slam the receiver of a cell phone in a truly satisfying manner.

All the way to the Temple of Seshat-by-the-Shore, Dov's cabdriver labored under the impression that his fare was one of those oddballs who had to sing along to whatever music was playing in his portable CD player. That was the illusion conjured up by the ARS Dov had invoked to veil his angry conversation with Ammi.

"The nerve of that idiot! The bloody, unmitigated nerve, giving me the brush-off like that!"

"I thought that the only thing that could ever be unmitigated was gall," the silver amulet remarked. "Gall and your chest hair."

"Does he even know who I am? Does he realize where he and his group will be when I take over the company?"

"Out in the cold?" Ammi offered helpfully. "Out in left field? Out on their butts? Out of time? Out of luck?"

"Try 'out of patience,' which is what I am with you, so don't push it."

"Hey, what's with the bruised ego?" The amulet clicked its nonexistent tongue. "All they did was forget to pick you up at the airport. You upset because no one gave you a big ol' gooey apology? That sort of thing never bothered you before. You'd just shrug it off. If it did bug you, you'd still act like everything was aces, file it away, and drag it out later on, when you could use it at the bargaining table. What's eating you all of a sudden?"

"I don't know, Ammi. I just don't know." He sounded just a little scared. "Maybe— maybe it's all that coffee I've been drinking. It's made me nervous, hypersensitive. You're right: This isn't like me."

"Coffee ..." Ammi gave a deprecating snort. "Never touch the stuff if I can help it. I'm already awake 24/7."

"You lie. You slept through Seattle."

"I was not asleep," the amulet responded a trifle huffily. "I was simply taking some downtime to reconfigure my systems."

"What systems? You're an amulet, not a computer! A magically enhanced talisman!"

"Hey, spells need periodic upgrades too! And don't try changing the subject: You're acting weird, even for you. What gives?"

"I told you: I don't know!"

Dov's angry shout was loud enough to make the cabbie turn around and ask him not to do that again, unless he really, really wanted to scare an honest driver into making an unscheduled swerve into Lake Michigan. Chastened, Dov didn't utter another word until they reached their destination.

After paying the fare and obtaining a receipt for tax purposes (Ray Rah had gotten that right, at least) Dov went up to the great front door of the Temple of Seshat-by-the- Shore and rang the bell. No one answered. He rang again, longer, with the same lack of result. Only when he switched to pummeling the wood with his fist and it swung back under the first blow did he discover that it had been unlocked, unlatched, and waiting for a gentle push all along.

"No one at the airport, no one at the door ..." He was still muttering his way through a growing list of grievances as he entered the house. The interior glories of the quasi- Egyptian temple made as striking an impression on Dov as they had on his sister, though in his case, admiration was severely tempered by resentment.

"Where are they? Playing hide and seek? Stupid Ray Rah. Stupid pomegranates. Stupid—whoa!" While searching for another human soul, Dov had failed to watch where he was going, tripped over a monumental black and white cat, and sprawled full length at the feet of the image of Thoth. "Stupid cat!" he hollered, shaking a fist after the retreating animal.

"Blasphemy!"

A shadow fell over Dov. He turned his head and looked up into the contorted face of a middle-aged woman. She was swathed in a white gauze sheath, her bare upper arms encircled by rich bracelets of gold and carnelian, her chest supporting a heavily beaded golden collar studded with turquoise scarabs. It was impossible to tell her original hair or eye color, for she wore a wig and had gotten a little overenthusiastic with green eyeshadow and thick lines of black kohl.

"I remember this movie," Ammi whispered, peeping out of Dov's shirt. "It's The Revenge of the Mummy's Mary Kay Rep! I love the part where she rings the doorbell and says, 'Ding-dong! Aten calling.' Get it? Aten calling? Avon calling? You old enough to remember back when Avon reps used to go around to ladies' houses and—? You know, like in Edward Scissorhands? Aw, c'mon, I know you're old enough to remember Edward Scissorhands!"

"Ammi," Dov whispered. "Shut up." He slapped on one of his most ingratiating smiles and turned up the Flirt-o-Meter to medium-high.

"Well, hel-lo, there. I'm sorry, I had to let myself in. I didn't think it would be a prob—"

"What have you done to the holy feline, Behold-all-the-moles-in-the-front-lawn-have- gone-to-Osiris?" The lady was not to be so easily won over.

"I'm afraid I tripped on him." Dov got to his feet slowly. The front of his traveling clothes had picked up an all-encompassing layer of cat hair, but he suppressed his annoyance and renewed his attack. "He's a beautiful animal. How did you ever get him to grow so fa—big and strong?"

The lady scowled. "Behold-all-the-moles-in-the-front-lawn-have-gone-to-Osiris is no mere animal. He is the holy creature of the Lady Bast. If I were you, I'd be praying that the goddess's attention was elsewhere when you called her precious one fat."

Since charm was scoring 0 for 0, Dov switched tactics to righteous indignation, which lesser souls might often mistake for good old-fashioned bullying. "And if I were you, I'd be praying that this so-called conversation didn't go any farther. Perhaps you don't know who I am? I'm Dov Godz from E. Godz, Inc. Heard of us? If not, have your leader Ray Rah bring you up to speed. E. Godz, Inc. is only the reason that this temple counts as a temple where being a temple counts for something solid, namely with the Internal Revenue Service!"

The woman smiled. It was a toothy grimace reminiscent of the sacred crocodiles who had once staffed the Nile-side temples in ancient Egypt and done their part for the ecology by devouring anyone the priests didn't like. The crocodiles became very devout and their descendants often bemoaned the modern world's comparative lack of religious zeal.

"A threat, Mr. Godz? You can't scare me; I have teenagers. You're not the head of E. Godz, Inc. yet, and if that day should come, I doubt you'll throw us to the wolves. We're far too valuable to you as a working subsidiary. You'd never do anything to dam the cash flow."

"You're a cynic, aren't you, Ms.—?"

"Call me Nenufer. And no, I'm not, but I think you must be. It's all about the money with you, isn't it? The money and the power. You like pretending to be everyone's best buddy, but only when you're hugging the knowledge that one word from you could turn everything upside down. It gives you a sick little thrill, playing the undercover mastermind. I'll bet you've got a tattoo on your butt that says If They Only Knew."

"How would you know what I am?" Dov shot back. "Considering we just met, what, five minutes ago? Wait, let me guess: woman's intuition." He sneered.

"Middle-aged woman's intuition," an unruffled Nenufer replied. "It's like a superpower: modified X-ray vision. I can't see through a brick wall, but I've met plenty of your type before so I can certainly see right through you."

"Lady, you've got issues."

She laughed at him. "Nice use of a dismissive catchphrase; you'll get extra points for style. Sure, I've got issues. Who doesn't? I notice that you still haven't bothered to apologize for what you did to Behold-all-the-moles-in-the-front-lawn—"

"Apologize to whom? To the cat? You think he cares? You think he even remembers? He's got a brain the size of a walnut and most of the storage space is taken up with that ridiculous name you gave him!"

"To me," said Nenufer. "For having treated the things that I believe in as if they were all just part of a silly little game, something to keep an aging Baby Boomer busy. My generation gets into such mischief when we're not kept busy, don't we? Mischief like standing up for human rights, and speaking up for peace, and pretending the homeless aren't invisible, and seeing that women get treated like human beings, and giving the earth a fighting chance to dig out from under all the trash and sludge and poison that some people believe will just go away if we attend all the right cocktail parties and think happy thoughts."

"Look, lay off me," Dov snapped. "I don't like lectures, but this also happens to be one that I don't need. My mother's part of your precious generation, remember? Believe me, I know everything you've done—and not just the stuff you're proud of! If you want to assume I look down on your beliefs, go ahead, but that won't make it true. One of the first things my mother did long before she set me up in the Miami office was teach me to respect every one of our clients. That was one lesson I took to heart, starting with respecting her. If you think I'm just in this for the money and the power, you might as well say that the same goes for my mother, because everything I know about running E. Godz, Inc. I learned from Edwina Godz herself!"

"Why, thank you, Mr. Godz." Like a brief summer cloudburst, Nenufer's dark scowl blew away as if it had never existed. Her face was transformed from Gorgon to Grace by a warm, affectionate smile. "That's all we were waiting to hear."

She turned on her heel, walked up to the statue of Isis, and clapped her hands four times. There was a great creaking of wood, a groaning of gears, and a squeal of moving parts as the statue of the goddess spread her arms wide. Fountains of blue and green sparks leaped from the gilded palms of her hands and the ceiling began to leak roses.

Before Dov's astonished eyes, the lights dimmed and a citrine glow suffused the great room. He smelled patchouli incense and heard many voices chanting sonorously, but he could not for the life of him figure out where they were coming from. When he looked for Nenufer, to ask her what was going on, he found her gone.

Now the gauze curtain at the far end of the room began to wave as if a small windstorm had darted into the house. With a clash of tinny bells, the fragile cloth was whipped aside and down the steps came Ray Rah, leading a procession of his followers— those who weren't watching the Cubs play, anyway.

They walked slowly, solemnly, in perfect order. Ray Rah himself was dressed to resemble the divine Osiris, ruler of the Afterlife. The thick layer of blue paint covering his face looked itchy—his nose and firmly closed mouth both twitched like mad—but despite his obvious agony he repressed any urge to break character and scratch. Behind him came two women dressed as the goddesses Isis and Nephthys. Musicians followed, playing small harps, drums, and the sistrum's jangling framework of bells. Next came those who carried burning bowls of incense, palm fronds to spread the fragrant smoke throughout the hall, and last of all a magnificently tall, regal woman wearing a gilded mask.

Dov drew in his breath sharply when he saw her painted face. It was Edwina.

Stumbling from the shock, he fell into line at the end of the procession and followed Ray Rah's congregation into a smaller room to one side of the hall of the gods' images. The walls were either stone or painted to look like stone. They were certainly painted to look as if they had been carved with low relief figures, in the style of the ancient Egyptian pharaonic tombs. Dov glanced to left and right and felt his heart begin to beat faster with dread.

The painted walls were covered with pictures of his mother.

As the rest of the procession circled the room, making reverential gestures at each of the pictures, Ray Rah dropped back from his place at the head of the line in order to speak with a trembling Dov.

"Please take your proper place, Mr. Godz," he said. "Ever since Horus first avenged his father Osiris' death, the firstborn son has been the most important participant in rites like these."

"But—but she's not dead yet!" Dov protested. "You're giving her a funeral and she's not dead!" Another, more terrible thought struck him: Could it be that while he was in transit, somewhere a computer had hiccupped and he'd missed out on a truly vital piece of news? "Is she?"

Ray Rah raised the ceremonial crook and flail aloft in a warding gesture. "May the gods forbid it! Of course not. We've been in touch with her on a daily basis ever since we heard about her illness."

"Oh." Dov lowered his eyes. They've been in touch with her every day, he thought. And what have I been doing? Nothing. Just looking out for my own interests. I'm one hell of a son. Suddenly he felt more ashamed of himself than when Sam Turkey Feather had called him on his lack of filial devotion.

"This isn't a funerary rite," Ray Rah went on. "Though I must admit that what attracted me to the ancient Egyptian practices was the emphasis on death. The trouble is, when you're at a cocktail party and someone asks you about your beliefs and you say something like, 'I belong to what's basically a death cult,' that kind of kills the conversation."

Dov couldn't disagree with that. "What is this if it's not a funeral?"

"It's our way of making peace with what must come. As much as we love Edwina, as much as we owe her, we knew that the day would come when we'd have to bid her farewell. That's how it is for all of us, isn't it? But in this country, death is an embarrassment. It's a wonder we can hear ourselves talk over the noise of several million people whistling past the graveyard. We worship youth and beauty not for their own sakes but because we tell ourselves that the young and the beautiful never die. We follow a thousand different health fads because we believe that there's some magic number of granola bars that will let you live forever, but only if you wash them down with the right kind of one hundred percent natural spring water while standing on the Sacred Treadmill. My generation's called the Baby Boomers for a reason: We act like babies when it comes to facing the inevitable. If we close our eyes, cover our ears, and hide under the blankets, Death won't be able to find us."

The inevitable ... Dov thought. My mother is going to die. He had known it for days, he had been saddened by it, but for the first time he truly felt it. Tears stung the corners of his eyes.

"The ancient Egyptians loved life just as much as we do," Ray Rah went on. "They loved all the physical joys and comforts of day-to-day living. That may be why they found a way to take it with them. But our way is not just about being buried in your red Thunderbird convertible: It's about knowing that someday you will have to be buried. We who follow the old ways know this, and trust me, knowing that today could be the last day of the rest of your life is not as scary as it seems."

"You get used to the idea," Dov said. "Is that it?"

Ray Rah nodded and smiled, cracking his blue face paint. "Exactly."

"And this ritual is to help you get used to the idea that Edwi—that Mom is going to die soon?"

Ray Rah nodded again. "To help us, but mostly to help you. We figured that it was the least we could do for you, since we've already pledged our support to your sister as the future head of E. Godz, Inc."

Dov was surprised that the news of Peez's victory didn't affect him at all. He was preoccupied by thoughts of a more important loss. "Thank you," he managed to tell Ray Rah. "It's very kind of you. I wish I could stay longer, but— I'm sorry." His usual glibness deserted him.

My mother is going to die. I'll never see her again, never hear her voice, never even be irritated by the way she treats me like I'm still a baby. My mother is going to—

He wheeled around and ran out of the Temple of Seshat-by-the-Shore before any of them could see him cry. On the way out, he collided with a young man carrying two heavy shopping bags. Dov knocked him off his feet without a second thought as he ran on, sending forth a taxi-summoning spell like a flare. By the time he reached the street, a cab was waiting.

The young man he'd overrun sat in a puddle of bright red fruit while he watched Dov speed away. The front steps soon crowded with Ray Rah and the rest of the congregation. The young man looked from the departing cab to the mounds of smashed fruit to the group on the stairs and said, "I got the pomegranates. Did I miss anything?"

"Not much, Billy-hotep," said Meritaten. "C'mon in and have a beer."