Channeling Cleopatra (23 page)

"Just checking, Doctor. We're relief staff
and don't know all of you."

"Perfectly understandable. But now, excuse
us, please." With that, Chimera stood in front of the sensor, which
performed a retinal scan, and the door opened. The guards came in
after them.

"We'll escort you into the building, Doctor,
in case there are other intruders."

"That is not necessary," Chimera said.

"We have our orders, Doctor."

"Allow me to phone my assistant, please,"
Chimera said. Picking up the phone in the reception area, Chimera
punched in the numbers of the villa, but Leda did not answer.
Either she was still asleep or she shared the suspicions that were
plaguing Chimera even more deeply with the arrival of the strange
guards.

"She does not seem to be where she is
supposed to be, Contessa. We're sorry. Let us go up and ready the
room, however. Perhaps she was only in the lavatory or out for a
walk. There seems to be a lot of activity on the roads
tonight."

The building lights preceded them like a
ghost carrying a candelabra as they walked down the corridors.

Once they were in the transfer suite, the
contessa said, "Ah, I remember this. Although, Mr. Wolfe, your
friend, and Gabriella were here when I had my blending, Doctor, I
don't recall you having an assistant."

"The reversal process is a bit more
complicated," Chimera said with a small, apologetic smile. The
longer these people waited, the better the chance that Leda would
be awake, the real security staff would be alert, or somehow
something might intervene to interrupt whatever it was that was
happening. However, there was no harm, meanwhile, and perhaps
considerable good, in honoring the contessa's wishes and removing
Pandora Blades. "We can cope, however, so if you will be kind
enough to be seated on the bed, Contessa—"

"I don't have to sleep again for the
removal, do I?"

"Oh yes. Otherwise you may find yourself
quite disoriented."

"I prefer the disorientation."

"But it could seriously destabilize your
emotional health."

"The previous procedure has taken care of
that already, thank you. In fact, I don't think I have time to do
this now, after all. However, I understand that you have a smaller
version of your invention, a portable version, one that we could
take with us."

"Us, Contessa? Or is it Madame Blades who is
now speaking?"

She gave a short laugh, harsh and a bit
coarse, unlike the contessa's usual one. "It's all the same,
Doctor, thanks to you."

"That machine is not available at the
present time. We . . . disassembled it to try to make the reversal
process quicker and more certain."

"If you disassembled it, you can reassemble
it," a new voice said from the doorway. Rasmussen stood there,
flanked by several uniformed men. "I believe we will find the
device in the laboratory in the doctor's home, my friends. Shall we
stop wasting time and go there now, before we have to kill the
entire staff of this facility as they arrive for work in the
morning?"

* * *

Leda pulled away from the goggles, ejected
the disk, and shoved it in with other apparently blank disks, all
unlabeled and freshly freed from their packaging.

Then she settled back in the armchair. She
might not be able to solve anything or ride in on a gleaming
motorcycle to save the day, but she thought she had done enough
unpredictable shit to throw a spanner into at least some of the
plans Gabriella and company had been hatching. There wasn't a lot
else she could do, and besides, she needed more sleep. Blended
people always needed to sleep, she thought, and felt herself
falling down the rabbit hole of unconsciousness as visions of
slave-powered sailing ships and white columns danced in her
head.

CHAPTER 22

On the two-hour flight from
Kefalos to Alex, Gretchen began to regret turning down Chimera's
offer to remove Duke from her life.
I
am not unsympathetic to your
predicament, Duke, but Wilhelm will be in Alexandria. What if we
are . . . reunited?

Never had a
ménage a trois
before?
Duke asked and immediately
regretted it.
Sorry,
liebchen,
just kidding. There'd still
only be two bodies: yours and his. I'd just be on the sidelines,
sort of cheering you on.

Cheering is not what I am
appreciating at such times,
she said and
her jaw tightened.

Maybe not; maybe that's what's wrong now.
Maybe more cheering should be happening.

Privacy.
It was a demand.

You drive a hard bargain, lady. But since
this is apparently the only me there is anymore, I guess I'd better
mind my p's and q's.

I am sorry, Duke, that they've killed you.
But they did it, not me. Me, I am still trying to save my
marriage.

He didn't argue with her. She held all the
cards. He tried not to think about it. Tried not to think what was
going to happen after. He'd faced death a lot of times. He'd just
never been actually dead at the time he was facing it. It was an
unusual kind of deal, and there were no instruction manuals about
it, even if he ever bothered to read instruction manuals.

Holeeee, will you look at
that?
he asked as they approached over the
harbor, now flooded so full that most of Pharos Island and the dike
were covered, with water sloshing across the Heptastadion and onto
the Corniche.

The moon was well up when they landed on the
deserted airstrip. They were pulling the bike out of the plane when
the runway manager and Pete Welsh, dragging a duffel bag,
approached. Pete hastily threw down his duffel and inserted his
body between Gretchen's and the bike. "Here, little lady, let me
help you with that."

"Danke,"
Gretchen said.

"Piss off, Pete," Duke added. "This is no
ordinary buff blond chopper chick you're dealing with here. This is
the boss's wife, Mrs. Wolfe herself."

Pete took three giant steps backward. It was
worth making Gretchen sore and adding another sixteen levels to the
general confusion just to see his face. "What the hell?"

"Watch your mouth, buddy, you're in the
presence of a lady."

"Ma'am, are you nuts or what?"

Duke, behave
yourself,
Gretchen said. To Pete she
added,
"Danke,
I
would like it if you would bring from the plane the motorcycle,
please."

The runway manager hadn't heard most of this
because he was very intelligently wearing earphones to muffle the
noise of the aircraft. Not that there was much noise now. The guy
had probably just neglected to take them off.

Pete accommodated Gretchen, looking as if he
was afraid something would pop out of her like a stripper from a
stag party cake.

"Where's the pilot?" the runway manager
asked. "Dr. Welsh needs a ride out of the country."

"
I
am the pilot," Gretchen said
proudly. "I am flying this airplane myself here. My husband has
also come here,
ja
?"

"Yes, ma'am. He and Dr. Faruk arrived
earlier this evening."

"He and who?" Gretchen asked.

"Dr. Faruk. Pretty young lady, only half
Egyptian, I think, works at the museum and has a lot to do with the
site, from what I gather."

Gretchen was not amused.

"Good thing she was with him, too," the
runway manager, seeing the unhappy expression on the face of the
boss's wife, continued. "He got arrested as soon as he set foot in
the country."

"What?"

"Yes, ma'am. That Dr. Namid just had to
blame somebody for what the earthquake did to the archaeology site.
Some people are like that. You know how it is."

Pete very diffidently set the bike down on
the runway and dusted off the seat, then thought he might venture
one more remark to this lady who seemed to be more than a little
strange. "Yeah, well, actually, he was after Punkin. I mean, Leda
Hubbard. I called to warn her, though, and she got away in the
plane your husband and Gabriella came in just before Namid and the
cops—that is, the Egyptian authorities—arrived."

Duke cut in, "The Kid's not here then? Shit,
Pete, where'd she go? I thought I asked you to look after her."

Pete took two steps toward
them, coming closer to Gretchen probably than he would have ever
come face-to-face with Duke unless he was trying to start a fight.
"Excuse me, lady," he mumbled, then asked, staring into Gretchen's
eyes so hard it was as if he were trying to X-ray her skull,
"Duke?
Buddy, I like this
new look you've got, but you really ought to notify your friends
before you have such a drastic makeover."

"It's a long story, Pete. Do you know, your
breath smells like you haven't been brushing your teeth real
regular. I don't think Mrs. Wolfe appreciates it. Why don't you
take a big step backward and explain to us about what happened to
make the police come after Leda and Wolfe?"

"Yes, and what is my husband doing with that
Faruk woman also," Gretchen added in her own German-accented
English.

"As to your question, ma'am, I couldn't
really say, except right now, I guess they're probably getting
booked into adjoining rooms at the local jail."

"They have arrested Wilhelm? Incredible! I
will see that he is released at once, though of course, the woman
is another matter."

She mounted the bike and put her hands on
the controls, then seemed at a loss for what to do next. Duke said,
"Pete, if you're in no immediate danger of arrest, I'd appreciate
it if you'd stick around for awhile. For one thing, you don't have
a pilot for that bird, and we may need it for a fast getaway once
we've sprung Dr. Wolfe from the hoosegow. I need you to try to get
ahold of Leda and explain to her, if you can, what's going on here.
Otherwise, she's going to have Laney and all of my ex-wives over
here looking for me, and I wouldn't wish that on anybody. Also, we
may need some backup."

"Are you kidding? I'm not sure what's going
on here, but I sure don't want to miss one exciting episode," Pete
said.

"You can use the Sopwith," Duke said
magnanimously.

"Sure. Where is it?"

"Oh, damn. Probably got lost in the flood,
didn't it?"

"Nope, but the last time I saw it, you were
riding this way on it."

The runway manager looked puzzled, but he
put in, "I think it got stolen. Dr. Hubbard said something about
that before she left. She had parked it by the control hut, and
while we were busy with coordinating the relief efforts from
Nucore, the bike disappeared. Thieves, she figured."

"Maybe," Duke said.

"We go
now,"
Gretchen insisted, but she still
couldn't get her hands and feet coordinated to start the bike. Duke
had basically acted for her previously, and now he was disinclined
to do so until he was good and ready.

"Well, hop on then," Duke told Pete. "But
don't get fresh with Mrs. Wolfe here."

"I meet a beautiful blond biker, and just my
luck she has a cop for an internal baby-sitter," Pete grumbled.

Gretchen was trying to make the bike go
zoom, but Duke rode it slowly as far as the control hut.

What looked like the top of a broken egg was
lying just outside the shadow cast by the amber emergency light
over the doorway.

Duke shut down the bike, much to Gretchen's
consternation, and bent over to pick up the object. "Old Mothah
Hubbard."

Gretchen, seeing the crack up the back of
the helmet with the identical legend to the one she was wearing,
winced. "So. This is a massive head injury you are having." The
blood still rubbed off sticky brown on her fingers, which were not
yet gloved.

"Yeah," he said. He'd been hurt before, but
if the helmet was cracked like this, his head must have just about
been pulped, too. Maybe Rasmussen did him a favor, killing him.

"Do not be giving that man so much credit,"
Gretchen said. She was starting to read him now, even when he
wasn't trying to talk to her. "If you had surgery, as the girl
said, very probably you had only a depressed skull fracture from
which you might recover no more cracked than you must have been
most of the time."

Duke didn't respond. He handed the damaged
helmet to Pete, who hooked it onto the saddlebags by stringing the
strap through the buckle of the bag.

He was so quiet that it made Gretchen
fidget, but this time, when she tried the bike's controls, her
fingers and feet expertly performed all of the proper motions to
send them roaring off.

With the hot wind in Gretchen's teeth, Duke
guided them back over the route he had taken the night he was
hijacked.

The road leading from the airstrip was under
repair, probably because Nucore was footing the bill. The main
highway was an unlit obstacle course of contraction signs, detours,
and witches' hats. By the side of the road, pretzeled power poles
and light poles remained as casualties of the quake.

Most dramatic of all, however, was the
harbor. Though the pumps were chugging away so loudly that they
drowned out traffic noise, filling the night like thousands of
giant bullfrogs in heat, the harbor shone with the sea as it had
before the cofferdam was built.

This is where the ancient
city was being raised?
Gretchen
asked.

Yeah, and that over there is what's left of
the dam. That was Pete's baby. He can tell you about that.

Wilhelm called to tell me
when the dam broke. The engineer
—
this man with his hands on my
middle?
—
was telling
him then that he thought the dam was repairable, that only a few
cells had been broken. I did not know that dams had
cells.