Khai of Khem

I The Dream Lovers

He was lying on a bed of rich furs in a room whose walls were huge sheets of purple linen. Above, glowing golden through the thin linen ceiling, a bloated moon slowly slid across the night sky. A brazier burned, sputtering slowly, emitting puffs of incensed, mildly narcotic smoke. If not for a warm current of air from beyond the bead curtain of the entrance, which brought pine-sweet mountain air to the room, the atmosphere would be heavy with these heady fumes.

Used to the dark, his eyes wandered about the room. Close to the thickly piled furs where he lay, an old and intricately carved camphorwood chest from the east lay open, spilling flashing jewelry on a floor of pure white sand. The walls had pockets sewn into their lower edges which, filled with sand, anchored them firmly to the floor. He knew that this room was but a segment of the greater whole, which itself was a great summer tent, a royal dwelling-place. That it was summer was obvious: the heat welling from—from everywhere—would be suffocating were it not for the breeze from outside. The night was young, however, and it would grow cooler as the night grew older. Toward dawn it would be quite cold.

He had bathed earlier (he seemed to remember that), in a cold mountain pool beneath a waterfall, but he was uncertain how he came to be here on this bed of fine furs, with flickering, brazier-cast shadows leaping on the linen walls and glowing on his tanned, hard-muscled warrior’s body. It bothered him mildly that he could not remember his name or his coming to this place, but he was drowsy and his eyelids were heavy, and it seemed a great bother to have to worry about or concentrate upon anything but the pleasure of simply lying here.

If only it weren’t so hot!

Ah, but the heat had come with the Khamsin blowing from the great western deserts beyond the land of the Hyrksos, that scorpion wind of madness that dried up men’s brains and drove them to monstrous excesses. He made a mental note that tomorrow—or the day after, he could not remember for certain—when his polyglot army went into battle, then that he would do well to wait for the hot breath of the Khamsin before striking.

Before striking at what, at whom? Once again he was at a loss to say. He could not remember. Perhaps it was the Khamsin which had stolen his memory, making his mind weary. And was it also the Khamsin, he wondered, which had driven her to invite him to her tent, whose husband he would be when the war was done? He hoped not. But in any case, the scorpion wind was gone now, flown down into the valley of the river to deposit its furnace heat in the lands of the enemy. And here he was in her tent, having crawled beneath its colored walls until he found the purple of her bedroom.

Ah, now he was remembering!

Her tent, yes, the tent of the woman whose bed he now lay upon.... But who was she? And why must he sneak like a thief in the night, who was a great general in the army of… whom? Slowly, he shook his head. He had only remembered her after hearing, tinkling from somewhere beyond many walls of linen, the voices of her handmaidens.

Handmaidens?

She was royal, then. And he was to be her husband. And she had bade him come, but not in at the door for that would be to shame her, whose pride was fierce.…

She must surely have finished with her bathing by now. What was she doing and why were they all laughing? Did she have a confidant among the girls, he wondered, who already knew that he was here? Did they all know? Well, what of it? He was who he was, and—

And who was he?

“Who am I?” he asked himself in a whisper, frowning. Before he could begin to seek for an answer, there came a flitting shadow, an outline seen in silhouette against a linen wall; then, the rustle of a bead curtain as a figure stepped through it into the room.

He had not known what to expect… but certainly it was not this. She was dressed—no, she had been dressed—in a sheet that wrapped her from head to toe; but now, on entering the bedroom and seeing him lying on her bed, she had discarded it, stepping from its folds naked as the day she was born. The purple of the walls and gold of the fire in the brazier were reflected from her skin, which shone with scented oil. Slippery as a fish she looked, sinuous as a snake. And like a snake’s, her half-shuttered eyes were hypnotic as she began to dance, hardly ever leaving his own eyes for all her body’s rapidly mounting gyrations and sensuous undulations.

Somewhere, as she danced, a drum seemed to take up the beat and now she matched its pulse. Perspiration began to mingle with the oil on her body until she gleamed with droplets of colored light like some queen of ancient magic. Spinning, her feet sent the white sand of the floor flying as she whirled round the heaped furs where he lay watching her. Her body was sweet and glistening, shapely and firm. A girl’s body, narrow-waisted and round in the hip, with breasts thrown out now by the speed of her spin and dark nipples erect in the passion of her dance. For this was a nuptial dance old as the nation itself, the dance a bride performs for her man before she gives herself to him on the bridal bed.

As she whirled closer, he reached for her, his pulse pounding with that of the unseen drum, catching her wrist and pulling her off balance. He could not hold her for every inch of her body was oiled; but even as she slipped from his grasp, she tripped and fell panting, breasts heaving from her exertions and round thighs agleam with oil so heavily applied that it stained the furs beneath her body. Fully roused, he kneeled over her, his skin pale by comparison, his now harsh breathing matching hers in its passion.

Suddenly, seeing him poised, panic or fear flashed in her eyes. Where the heat of the Khamsin had burned in her veins, now chill mountain streams ran, taking the fire from her blood. A cooling breeze, rising up from nowhere, set the walls billowing and caused the brazier to sputter and its flames to burn a little lower.

She made to swing her legs past him, but he caught her knees and moved in quickly between them. Arching her back for purchase, she tried to wriggle backwards across the furs. Cruelly, he gripped the soft flesh of her thighs, drawing her to him. She sobbed and beat at his face, her shoulders on the furs but her lower body held up by the strength of his arms. Now he threw an arm under her supple body, his other hand seeking her breasts. Lifting her higher, he lowered his head and kissed her belly, his tongue finding the hollow of her navel and tasting the oil gathered there.

And abruptly she stopped fighting him. Beneath the fingers of his free hand, he felt her nipples stiffen. He lifted his head from her belly and looked at her. Her own head had fallen back onto the furs, where her shoulders took the weight of her upper body; and gradually he felt her weight lift from his arm as, one at a time, she drew back her feet to tuck them under her thighs.

He leaned back momentarily, reached out both hands now to her breasts. Her breath came in harsh gasps as she began to move her head from side to side, faster and faster. And although the hot wind from hell was long gone, still the Khamsin seemed to have taken her back into its spell. His eyes went to her gleaming belly, to the dark, tightly-curled mass of hair where her legs came together. Like a strange, sentient orchid, slowly her body opened for him, moist, hot and inviting. He gave a choked cry to match her moaning, and—

—And started awake!

The alarm! The damned alarm’

His arm sought the clamoring, clattering alarm-clock, swept it from its position on the small table beside his bed, sent it flying across the room to bounce off the wall and fall, still ringing, to the floor. With the action, pain shot through his body and he felt again the brace that held his neck rigid. Sweat bathed him from head to foot and his bedclothes were a tumbled mound on the floor beside his bed, thrown there by his dreaming struggles.

And already his dream was receding, as it always did, fading into mists of subconscious mind. “No!” he cried out, then cursed and fell limply back onto his pillows. “Goddamn!”

Her name … if only he could remember her name! But no, he had not even known it in his dream, so how might he now hope to remember it in the waking world ? She was gone, and the dream too, returning to wherever it is that dreams are born.

Outside, the morning traffic rumbled in London’s streets, and the tent of Paul Arnott’s temptress was suddenly thousands of miles away. Thousands of miles and thousands of years away, lost in unknown abysses of space and time….

II Paul Arnott of London

Wilfred Sommers made his way from the hospital reception and enquiry area through double swinging doors and down a corridor lined with children’s wards. He passed through a second set of doors out into the hospital gardens, where he followed a path between a landscaped clump of shrubs and a rock outcrop toward the gymnasium. The latter was the physiotherapy center where Paul Arnott, the man Sommers sought, was halfheartedly complying with his doctor’s orders that he help toward his own rehabilitation.

Sommers entered the gymnasium complex, made his way past a small pool where handicapped children swam under the careful guidance of specialist nurses, through one more door and into a room of wall-bars, weighted pulleys and all sorts of similar therapeutic apparatus. There, lying on his back on a rubber mat, Paul Arnott pumped small dumbbells, one in each hand, grimacing as his efforts put strain on his neck and back. His neck was braced front and rear by a sort of girdle affair which was laced up one side. It sat stiff and uncomfortable on his chest. Looking up at Sommers, Arnott nodded a painful welcome.

“Physiotherapy?” Sommers grinned.

“What?” Arnott grimaced again. “Good heavens, no—uh!—Wilf!” He slowly pumped his weights. “I’m—uh!—a masochist, didn’t you know? Anyway, what brings you here?”

“Two things,” Sommers laughed. “First, it’s been a week or two since I last dropped in, and—” he paused.

“And?”

“And I’ve brought something to show you.” The smile passed from Sommers’s face as swiftly as it had come.

“Oh?” Arnott prompted. “Well, then, why so hesitant about it? Show me.”

Sommers nodded. “Put down those weights and sit up.”

“Hmm? All right.” Arnott gritted his teeth and forced himself upright. Bending at the waist, he allowed the dumbbells to thump down onto the rubber mat. “I have to admit, they were starting to get a bit heavy,” he said ruefully. Then he looked quizzically at his visitor. “All right, what’s your big surprise?”

For a moment Sommers said nothing, just stood and looked down at his friend. For all that Paul Arnott was an Englishman of a long line of Englishmen, no one meeting him for the first time could help mistaking him for a “foreigner.” Even knowing him as he did, Sommers still occasionally regarded him that way. His looks were proud, hawkish, dark … Arabic. A man of the sands, a chief of wandering desert tribes, the son of a sheik, perhaps, or an educated emissary of the new, oil-rich Middle East—but surely not an Englishman.

He was English, however, and quite well-to-do; but much more important where Sommers was concerned, they shared a common interest. Along with the fact that they were both fairly young men, their mutual interest was the one thing they did share, for in everything else they might almost be opposites.

But in the three years of their acquaintance, a mutual fascination with Egyptology had made of them firm friends. Wilfred Sommers, following in the footsteps of his famous Egyptologist father, Sir George Sommers, was by profession an archeologist specializing in the NileValley; by contrast Paul Arnott was an “amateur” Egyptologist, albeit the most amazingly knowledgeable and controversial amateur one could possibly imagine. Certain of his theories concerning Ancient Egypt were, to say the very least, “unorthodox.”

“Well?” Arnott prompted his visitor again, staring up at him.

“Paul—now I mean this,” Sommers said. “I’m not joking at all. This thing might shock you.”

Arnott’s eyes searched the other’s face, then went to the large manila envelope he carried. “Is that it?”

Sommers nodded. “It is.”

“What’s in it?”

“Just a photograph.”

“A photograph is going to shock me?”

“It might. Certainly it will fascinate you.” Sommers handed the envelope over. “There you are, see for yourself.”

Arnott opened the envelope’s flap and pulled out a colored photograph.

Sommers watched his face as he studied the picture, a photograph of a beautifully worked funerary mask in glowing gold. At first Arnott’s face portrayed surprise__a little shock—then astonishment and disbelief. His mouth fell open and he turned his gaze once more upon his visitor.

“Paul?” Sommers crouched down and gripped the other’s shoulder. “What is it?”

“Sh’tarra!” Arnott finally gasped.

“What? What did you say, Paul?”

“I said—” Arnott shook his head. His eyes were very wide, misted almost. For a moment, they seemed to shine on another place, another time. Then they cleared. “I said ... Sh’tarra!”

“Is that a name, a place?”

“I … it’s a name,” and again he shook his head. “Wilf, where did you get this?”

“You’ve noticed the likeness, obviously.”

“Likeness? To Julie, you mean? My God, man, I’d have to be blind not to notice it!” He made to get to his feet and Sommers helped him. “And yet—”

“Yes?”

Again Arnott seemed to gaze into space and time. “It wasn’t just the likeness that stopped me. I don’t know what it was, really.” He shrugged half-apologetically. “Give me a hand, will you?”

He wore tracksuit trousers. Now, with Sommers’s assistance, he began to struggle into the jacket. Holding the jacket for him, his friend considered Arnott’s remarkable powers of recuperation (his accident had been a very bad one) and thought back on what he knew of the man, particularly of those unconventional “theories” of his.

For instance: Arnott shared the Russian magus Gurdjieff’s belief in an unrecorded, sophisticated pre-dynastic civilization which was as ancient to the Ancient Egyptians as they themselves were to the Greeks; and his firm conviction, without a shred of hard evidence, that indeed Egypt was the forgotten source of all Man’s wisdom, must surely place him alongside the most exotic or esoteric of theosophists and half-baked cultists and their apostles. And yet, Sommers knew that Paul Arnott was no crank.

His education and background alone were such as to preclude any suggestion of irresponsible quirkiness; his instinctive and deep knowledge of the accepted areas of his subject fully demonstrated his credibility as an authority; Sir George himself had made him a standing offer of work in the field based on his own estimation of the man’s ability, and accepted Egyptologists of more than merely perfunctory note had found occasion to seek his advice as an expert. All of which only served to highlight those areas where Arnott’s beliefs were less than orthodox.

He himself insisted upon his purely amateur status—no, not even that, he professed himself to have merely “an interest” in Ancient Egypt—but certain so-called “masters” in the field would give their eyeteeth to be able to learn those things which Paul Arnott seemed instinctively to know. He had his detractors, of course, and if he had ever attempted to project himself as a professional, then these would certainly have made profit of those peculiar anomalies in his reasoning concerning a much earlier Egypt. Sommers could readily understand why….

III Memories out of Time

For example: Arnott was emphatic in his belief that the wheel had not been developed as a work tool but as a true wheel for use in conveyances and vehicles of war, specifically the chariot. Its war use, he said, must have preceded any domestic application by many centuries, though certainly it had been lost to Egypt’s armies by the time of the Hyrksos invasions.

He agreed that the entire area now falling within the boundaries of the Sahara, including all of Egypt and lands adjacent, had once been a green and fertile belt as recently as 7,000 years ec, but disagreed with current concepts which relied upon gradually changing weather conditions and declining rain patterns to account for the rapid encroachment of the deserts. According to Arnott, the dessication of the land had occurred much more speedily than that—in a matter of weeks or even days—when vast herds of elephants, ponies, buffalo, hippos, perhaps even Bos primigenius had been surprised by the sun no less rapidly than the Siberian mammoth, equally mysteriously, had once fallen prey to the ice.

He argued that the iron sword had not been introduced into the NileValley by invaders, but that they had simply re-introduced it. The use of iron in weapons had arisen in Egypt or a bordering land and had spread outwards; the original center had somehow “lost” the art of forging iron; and the iron sword had finally come back again thousands of years later with blood and fire and the black thunder of war.

The pyramids (according to Arnott) were not merely fantastic tombs, but were all examples or inferior copies of an earlier monument long ago destroyed or lost in vast ergs of drifted sand. He had it that the “original” Egyptians—or rather their rulers, Pharaohs of conjectural lineage—had built their pyramids for an entirely different reason, in imitation of something which had stood there in an even older epoch.

And in this last example, Arnott’s themes seemed inescapably to link him with the theosophists, with “sensation seekers,” and with the authors of the current spate of lucrative but wildly speculative and romantic books dealing with primordial incursions from outer space. For he made no bones at all about his belief that indeed the source of Egypt’s ancient wisdom was the stars. The first pyramid had not been built in Egypt at all—it had landed there!

Thinking back on these things as they left the gymnasium complex together, Sommers was brought back to the present when Arnott repeated his earlier question:

“The photograph, Wilf—where did you get it?”

“Hmm? Oh, sorry, my mind was wandering. I took the photograph myself, yesterday, at the museum. I’m on my way back there right now, if you’re interested.”

“If I’m interested, Wilf? Try to stop me coming back with you!”

They walked out of the room together and along the side of the swimming pool. The pool was empty now and Sommers’s voice echoed as he said: “I’ll be glad to have you along. It’s been some time since the Old Man has seen you. But are you entirely free to come and go here? Don’t you have to book yourself out or something?”

“No, I’ve been back at the flat since yesterday morning, but I’m still to report in here daily for my sessions. In another fortnight I’ll have this dammed thing off my neck, and then—”

“Then back to risking that same silly neck hang-gliding, I suppose?”

“You know, Wilf, if they had only known how to go about it, men could have been flying hang-gliders ten thousand years ago. The materials were all at hand—rough and ready, certainly, but available.”

“Is this the start of another Ancient Wisdom theory, Paul?”

Arnott shook his head. “No, but in any case, I think I’m finished with hang-gliding. I’ve thought about it, but—oh, I don’t know. Perhaps the accident soured me. Julie ... you know.”

Sommers knew. Three months earlier Arnott had been flying at Glenshee in the Grampians. Julie had been a novice pilot. On the day in question Arnott had forbidden her to fly; the winds were blustery, the landing site awkward, the rocks far too sharp. She had waited until he was airborne and had then launched herself after him. He saw her—the way her badly-rigged kite was about to fold up—and he put himself beneath her to break her fall. She killed herself and almost took him with her.

“Paul, I’m sorry,” Sommers said. “I didn’t mean to—”

“Of course not, I know that. But let’s drop it now.... About the mask,” he changed the subject. “Where did it come from? How did you get your hands on it?”

“The damnedest thing,” Sommers answered. “It was brought in by an Egyptian!”

“An Egyptian?”

“A fellow who works for a travel agency in Cairo, yes. Apparently he’s a bit of an archeologist in his spare time, a treasure hunter at any rate, and he dug the thing up on a lone expedition to—”

“To the Gilf Kebir!” Arnott finished it for him.

They were just passing out through the hospital’s main doors and into suburban London’s streets. Sommers caught at the other’s arm. “Paul, how did you know that? How could you possibly know?”

“How did I know?” Arnott shook his head, looked dazed. Worriedly, he said: “I … it was a guess.”

“A guess?” Sommers’s amazement showed. “Don’t make me laugh. Why, you’d have to be telepathic! I mean, of all the God-forsaken places—”

“I tell you it was a guess!” Arnott snapped, his naturally dark features strangely pale. “As soon as I saw the thing I… I thought of it as coming out of Kush.”

“Kush?” Again there was amazement in Sommers’s voice. “But Kush lay south of Egypt, Paul, not to the west!” They crossed the pavement to where Sommers’s car stood at the curb.

“It did in your ancient world, Wilf, but not in mine,” Arnott answered; and again it was as if his eyes shone on distant scenes. “The Kushites did move south later, yes, but originally their land lay to the west of Khem, and its strongholds were in the Gilf Kebir….”

“And of course you have proof of all this?”

“No,” Arnott grinned sheepishly, seeming to come back down to earth. “It’s just another one of my ‘crazy’ theories!”

“You and your theories,” Sommers shook his head and held open the door of his car until Arnott was comfortable inside. He climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that a worried frown had appeared on the other’s face, that deep lines of concentration furrowed his brow.

“Paul, are you sure you’re well enough to be out of the hospital? I mean, quite apart from your broken neck and busted ribs, you took a bad knock on the head, and—”

“No, I’m fine, Wilf. It’s just that when I saw your photograph … it was like … I seemed to, well, remember things.”

“Things like Sh’tarra?”

“Sh’tarra? Yes. I saw the likeness to Julie, of course, but the face on that mask—it was the face of Sh’tarra. It was her face.”

“But who is Sh’tarra, Paul, and when did you know her?”

Arnott looked at him, looked through him. He shook his head. “How could I have known her, Wilf ? That mask is eight or nine thousand years old. And don’t ask me how I know that, either.”

Somehow he managed a weak laugh. “Blame it on my crazy theories, if you like, Wilf. Why not? Just another of Paul Arnott’s nutty notions….” In another moment, his voice went deadly serious. “But crazy or not, I’ll tell you something. The woman whose face is on that mask, that’s Sh’tarra—and I’ve been waiting for her all my life!”

IV Arnott’s Story

“Wilf,” said Arnott as the other guided the car out into light traffic, “I’d like to tell you about... about myself. Your father already knows most of my story. I once had a drink with him and I loosened up sufficiently to explain a thing or two—a few of my ‘theories,’ a dream or two—things that have been with me as long as I can remember. We talked of this and that and—oh, everything. He draws things out of a man, your father.”

“Yes, Sir George is a wise old man, Paul,” Sommers answered. “He accepts you, and that’s good enough for me. He once told me that I’d do well to listen to you—that I might learn a lot—that you were the oddest collection of contradictions in human form it had ever been his good fortune to encounter. After that... you may believe I’ll listen to whatever you have to say.”

Arnott nodded. “Your father flatters me. But I suppose he’s right; I’m sure enough a strange one, and that’s the truth.” He settled himself more comfortably in his seat. “Do you believe in destiny, Wilf?”

“I suppose I do,” Sommers answered. “But it’s for great men, Paul. For kings and generals—not for ordinary men.”

“Oh? It’s funny, but I’ve always felt that destiny was just around the corner for me. Is that strange? Oh, I know I’ve been a wastrel and ne’er-do-well to some, philanderer and fool to others—but ever since I was a small boy, I’ve felt that something was beckoning me. It beckoned and I sought it out. I’ve climbed mountains with the best of them, but destiny wasn’t up there. I went with Adrian Argyle to look for old Atlantis in the Aegean. He didn’t discover Atlantis and I didn’t find destiny.”

Sommers smiled. “Wanderlust is the word, Paul. You’re not weird, you’re just restless!”

“Restless? Yes, I suppose I am. I spent a year on a Kibbutz in Israel, two more on Hokkaido learning martial arts from the real experts, and I lived for a good twelve months in a so-called ‘iron-age’ pre-Viking settlement in Norway. Now tell me, if I wasn’t searching for something that couldn’t be found in the ordinary world, then just what the hell was I doing?”

“Getting ready for your clash with destiny, perhaps?” Sommers answered.

“Maybe,” Arnott shrugged. “I’m not sure. I only know that when I was in Japan, it seemed all-important that I should turn myself into a fighting machine; and when we were isolated in that frozen fjord, the only thing that mattered was knowing how to cure skins and forge iron as it was first forged at the beginning of the iron age. But always, as soon as I achieved my aim—” he shrugged again and fell silent for a moment, then continued in a different vein:

“As for sports: when other kids were playing football or splashing around in the swimming pool, I was fooling about with archery and fencing, even medieval jousting! I’ve flown with the birds in a kite-frame of silk and aluminium; and I’ve donned fins and tanks of air to take me down to the bottom of the sea. But in all of these things, always destiny has given me the slip.”

“Yes, you’ve done a good many things, Paul,” Sommers agreed, “and you’ve certainly traveled a great deal, too. But why didn’t you ever try Egypt?”

“Egypt?” Arnott frowned and shrugged again. “Perhaps I’ve been pursuing destiny on the one hand and avoiding it on the other—like a cat chasing its own tail.” For a moment he mused silently, then:

“It’s the one place—the one thing—that I’ve always feared,” he admitted.

“You’re afraid of Egypt?” Sommers laughed. “Now you really have lost me!”

“It’s like a Shangri-la to me, Wilf, a Brigadoon!” Arnott turned in his seat to stare hard at his friend. “I’ve never been there, but I feel that I have. And I feel that my Egypt is still there. Not in this century, no, but in another time, another world. I feel—I’ve always felt—that I’m a sort of stranger here, in this century. And yet I’ve feared to go back, to visit Egypt now, today. I suppose I’m afraid of what I might find there.”

“So you believe that your fancies aren’t just daydreams after all but, well, memories of a sort?” Sommers glanced at him out of the corner of his eye.

“Something like that, yes,” Arnott nodded. “I’m sure that your father guessed as much without ever asking. Of course, I’ve never told anyone else about it. I much prefer to be seen as an eccentric rather than a downright lunatic! But I’ll tell you something: a few of those ideas of mine aren’t nearly so crazy as they’re cracked up to be.”

Sommers knew what he meant. During a recent drought, a chariot wheel had been found in the clay banks of the Blue Nile at Wad Medani. Although it had been in a very poor state of preservation, it could still be seen to be different in construction from other Egyptian wheels. Also, while fragmentary artifacts found in the same clay were plainly bronze age Egyptian or Nubian, the hub of the wheel had been of iron! Iron? In a wheel come down from an era many thousands of years before the Hittites were allegedly the first to forge iron in Asia Minor? How could that be? Or … was Arnott right about a prehistoric wheel and a “bronze age” use of iron?

Then again, how could one take the man seriously? What of his rather more esoteric belief in visitors from outer space originating an Ancient Wisdom in pre-dynastic Egypt? Well, even in that area Arnott was not entirely alone in his thinking, though certainly his contemporaries were seen as charlatans and sensationalists. Sommers, for all that he must remain skeptical, could not help but remember an illustration Arnott had once drawn for Sir George. It was simply a picture of the ankh, the Egyptian symbol of generation; but alongside the conventional drawing Paul Arnott had drawn a second ankh, making it to look like something else entirely:

And what of the Egyptians themselves, the popular “Ancient” Egyptians as opposed to that earlier race of Arnott’s convictions? What were the real origins of their belief that the Pharaoh was a “son” of the sun god and his representative on earth? And why did they believe that his body had to be enshrined in a great tomb, a pyramid, in order that he might ascend to the sky to become one with his father ?

Why, if one’s imagination were sufficiently fertile, it might almost appear that Arnott’s—

“I’m accused of having been a wild one in my time,” his friend’s voice broke abruptly in on Sommers’s mental wanderings, “and perhaps I have been. But if I was then it sprang from my neverending sense of frustration. Doing the things I’ve done—the dangerous things, the risky things—was my way of escaping, of running from the mundane side of life. Perhaps my mother’s money spoiled me, I don’t know, but it let me do what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it. Then, when I found Julie ... she was the closest I’ve ever been to that dreamworld of mine, do you see? And yet it wasn’t really Julie at all. It was just the way she looked.”

“Like Sh’tarra, d’you mean?”

“Like Sh’tarra, yes. Like the face on that mask, that funerary mask from olden Kush. I have to see that mask, Wilf, hold it in my hands, feel it! The photograph brought things awake in me, raked over the embers, but I’m sure there are other memories that still lie dormant. I just have this feeling that the moment I lay my hands on that mask again—” And abruptly, he paused.

As the car drew to a halt at the curb outside the museum, the two men turned to stare at each other. They sat there like that, silently, for long moments. Then, with the slightest tremor in his voice, Sommers said what both of them were thinking:

“When you lay your hands on the mask ‘again,’ Paul?”

To which neither one of them had an answer….

V The Awakening

The museum was a three-storied building standing central in an early Nineteenth Century street. Set back from the street proper, it stood close to the river, which could be seen from its higher windows. Its main entrance was through massive doors at the top of a flight of balustraded steps. Though one of these doors stood open, a sign clearly proclaimed the museum to be closed to the public for the afternoon. The last visitors had already left.

A museum of antiquities, the ground floor was filled with remnants of historic and prehistoric Britain; the first floor concerned itself with Ancient China, Mycenae, Peru, Crete and many other lands; but the second floor, where Sir George had his office and study, was the museum’s center of greatest interest. For that topmost floor was a small corner of Old Egypt, trapped and immobilized here in London, where all the magic of that ancient land was concentrated into an almost tangible essence within four walls of comparatively modern stone.

Climbing the stairs close behind his friend, Arnott said: “Will I get a chance to meet your mysterious Egyptian? I’d certainly like to talk to him.”

“That’s already been arranged,” Sommers answered. “He’s staying in London for the time being.”

“What’s his name?”

“He calls himself Omar Dassam.”

“And the Egyptian authorities simply let him bring the mask out of Egypt and into England? Why did he seek out Sir George ?”

Sommers coughed and answered, “He apparently smuggled the thing out! Being employed in the trade—as an agent for one of the big airlines— he had no difficulties. As to why he brought the mask to us—” he shrugged. “He says he ‘guessed’ we were the right ones to approach!”

Arnott frowned. “It all sounds too weird to be true. And what kind of a crazy trick was it to smuggle the thing out in the first place?”

They paused on the second floor landing facing a scaled-down three-dimensional model of Hatshepsut’s Temple at Deir el Bahri. Sommers shrugged again. “I know,” he agreed, “it is weird, isn’t it? And I haven’t told you everything.”

The private section of the second floor, where Sommers’s father had his office and study, lay at the west end of the building. Now, as they made their way down aisles of exhibits—between mummy-cases and man-sized models of Ancient Egyptian gods—Arnott asked: “Well, then, tell me the rest.”

“When I came to see you,” Sommers admitted, “it was chiefly to get you to come back here.”

“You succeeded,” said Arnott. “I would go to John-O’-Groats to see that mask.”

“No,” Sommers corrected him, “specifically, I wanted you to meet Omar. He … well, in a way, he’s as big a bundle of mysteries as you are. My father will explain.”

They passed through a door bearing the nameplate of Sommers’s eminent father and through his office, then paused at a second door which would open into Sir George’s study. Sommers knocked lightly and a voice from within said, “Come in.”

“Paul,” Sir George smiled, rising from his chair behind a desk that dwarved his slight figure, “I’m delighted you could come.” He extended his hand.

“How are you keeping, sir?” Arnott politely inquired, taking his hand in a firm grasp. “You certainly look well.”

“Oh, I’m well enough, Paul—and all the better for seeing you. Moreover, I’m more than a little excited!” The professor was small, dapper, gray-haired and always nervously alert and full of a boundless energy. At this very moment, he seemed to sparkle with that excitement he had mentioned, and Arnott could only imagine that it had something to do with him.

“And so you’re up on your feet and out and about at last,” the elder Sommers continued. “And how do you feel?”

“I’ll feel a lot better,” Arnott grimaced ruefully, “when they take this damned straight-jacket off my neck! Wilfred has told me about your peculiar visitor, but he says there’s more still to be told. Perhaps you’d like to enlighten me?”

“Ah!” the professor smiled again. “But I had hoped you might enlighten us!”

“I don’t follow you.”

“Sit down, Paul, sit down. Wilfred, get him a drink, will you? Paul, about this Egyptian, Omar Dassam. Does the name mean anything to you?”

“No, I never heard of him before. Why do you ask?”

“Well, I’ve spoken to him at some length, and to tell the truth—and quite apart from his accent and the obvious difference of character and background—it was much the same as talking to you!”

“How on earth do you mean?” Arnott frowned.

“When he talks about Egypt,” the professor explained, “—about the prehistoric Egypt which predated the ancient land we study and try to understand—then he sounds just like you. It’s almost as if you shared a common source of knowledge…. But listen, you don’t have to take my word for it, you’ll be able to talk to him yourself in a few minutes. He’s on his way over here now. Meanwhile, what do you think of the mask?”

“The photograph? I’d much rather see the real thing.”

The professor nodded and sat down in his chair. He opened a cupboard behind his desk, took out the large, heavy mask and placed it on the desktop where Arnott could see it. Arnott stood up immediately, took up the golden mask and held it up to the light from the window. He stared at it wide-eyed.

At that very moment, there came the sound of footsteps from the office beyond the closed door, followed by a knock and a guttural, muffled inquiry: “Sir George, are you in?”

“You see?” said the professor. “He’s already here.” In a louder voice he called out, “Come in, Omar, come in.”

Arnott heard Sir George’s words, heard the study door open and close behind his back, but he made no move. He remained as he was, as if frozen in that position, with the mask held up to the light. His eyes burned in its reflected glow.

“Ahem!” the professor coughed. “Wilfred, perhaps you’d do the honors?”

“Paul,” came the younger Sommers’s voice as if from a million miles away, breaking in on Arnott’s rapt contemplation of the funerary mask, “this is Omar Dassam. Omar, Paul Arnott.”

Now Arnott turned to gaze at the newcomer. Dark eyes stared into his own, a strong hand reached for his. The man was obviously Egyptian, sharing with Arnott a slim-hipped, broad-shouldered build. “How do you do?” he inquired, sensuous lips forming a curiously cautious smile.

Their hands met.

Dassam glanced down at the hand he held—and immediately snatched his own hand back.

“Wha—? What the devil—!” Arnott exclaimed, startled and angry.

The other carefully took hold of his hand again, pointed at the white groove that ran in a band round the middle finger. “That mark,” he rasped. “Do you wear a ring?”

“No,” Arnott answered. “The mark is a scar—I think. It’s been there as long as I can remember.”

Dassam released his hand, groped in a pocket, brought out two rings. One was silver and he placed it on a finger of his own hand. The other—large, golden, with an ankh relief—he gave to Arnott. “Try it on,” he nodded eagerly, licking his lips, visibly held in the grip of unknown emotions.

Arnott stared at him a moment longer, then pushed the ring onto his finger. It sat in the groove of flesh as if grown there. Then—

The room seemed to reel!

To the two men freshly introduced, it was as if an earthquake had struck suddenly, silently in the heart of London, one whose shock they alone could feel. While the professor and his son looked on in amazement, Dassam and Arnott staggered and fell one against the other, held on for support, then straightened and gazed once more into each other’s eyes. All was as it had been, except that now there was something new written on their faces.

Recognition….

“Khai!” Dassam gasped, his voice choked, breaking as it gabbled something in a harsh, unknown tongue.

“Manek!” Arnott answered in that same tongue. “You, Manek Thotak!”

And in that long moment as the two stared, they seemed to look through their present forms to a time beyond—and they remembered … they remembered.