Channeling Cleopatra (24 page)

Yeah, well, they're
constructed in sections they call cells. They can stand
independently, so some of them could give way without necessarily
harming the others.
Across the littered
waters, the long necks of tall cranes, like robot giraffes, stood
out against the softer darkness of the night.

They turned off the highway onto the access
road leading to Pharos Island and the fort. Water licked the hem of
the island again, and as they rounded another bend, Duke looked for
the beluga but didn't see it. Then he realized that where it should
be there were instead two new hills with a deep gully in the middle
and scraps of white fluttering around the site. "Holy shit," he
said.

Your daughter?
Gretchen held her/their breath.

Yeah, it's a wonder she got
out of that, but she
is
my kid, after all.

Pete said, as if reading their minds, "Good
thing you gave me a heads-up about Punk—Leda. She almost got
trapped in that thing. I broke in the door and pulled her out."

Having viewed the damage, they veered back
onto the remaining lane of the Corniche. Many cars had been hauled
up onto the sides of the road, blocking pedestrian paths.

"Where's the local cop shop?" Duke hollered
back to Pete, his words emerging from Gretchen's mouth oddly
accented, in a husky contralto with a little lisp.

Gretchen said, before Pete
could answer, "The police are not our first line of inquiry. First
we go to the German consulate. My husband's status is such that he
should have diplomatic immunity. Never should he have been
arrested, and if he was, the consul should have been
notified.
Nein,
he
should have been present and prevented such an outrage."

"You go, girl," Duke said, mimicking
something he heard teenage girls say to encourage their peers. "But
isn't the consul going to be off duty, asleep?"

"Any consul worth his title will be awakened
for such a crisis as this and for such a person as Wilhelm. If
Wilhelm is in jail and the consul is sleeping, he is not doing his
job."

The only problem with her argument was that
the consulate was one of the buildings that hadn't survived the
quake. A hand-lettered sign in German and Arabic said that any
tourists wishing assistance should seek it at the consulate in
Cairo.

"So!" Gretchen said. Duke
knew that she meant,
That didn't work out,
time for plan B.
He knew this both because
he was sharing brain space with her but also because he counted
among his extremely varied ancestors some hard-headed German women.
None of them wasted much time, either, when there was something
they thought needed doing.
We are
dismounting now. The police station is in the middle of the next
block. We must look to them respectable. Dr. Welsh must drive the
motorcycle as if it is his. I will wear my skirt. You, Duke, will
be silent,
ja?
The
police will be more cooperative if I speak through Dr.
Welsh.

You mean because of the
fundamentalist Islamic thing?
Duke asked,
somewhat astonished. None of the women he knew well would have
catered to those attitudes.

Here they are not attitudes, Duke. They are
part of the law. As a foreigner, I am excused more than local
women, but I wish not to incur scorn and disrespect from the
police. So. The charade.

The charade was short-lived and for the most
part unnecessary, however.

The policeman on duty was unshaven and
looked as if he had not slept in several days. But he was no
ruffian. The tourist police were a special branch who had to be
well-educated, multilingual, with good people skills. This one was
fresh out of the last item. He listened dazedly to Pete's
explanation, as fed to him by Gretchen, but simply flipped through
his log book and said, "No one named either Wolfe or Faruk has been
arrested."

"Uh . . . you'd remember him," Pete said
upon prompting. "He's a VIP. His company was in charge of building
the dam that broke."

"Is it?" the policeman asked without
interest. "That hardly makes him a criminal. Earthquakes destroyed
the ancient lighthouse, the palaces, all of the structures the
university and museum people have been trying to dig up. A dam
would be no better able to stand against it. It is the will of
Allah."

"Is the officer who was in charge when Mr.
Wolfe and Dr. Faruk were arrested still here? It was only a short
time ago.

"That would be me. Oh, yes, I know who you
mean now. At the insistence of one of the archaeologists, we sent a
car after them, but as soon as they came to the station, it was
plain to see the charges were nothing but petty politics. In case
you haven't noticed, we have a disaster on our hands. We are still
trying to dig out people who were buried in collapsed buildings.
Just an hour ago, a wing of the women's and children's hospital
collapsed, and because the other hospitals also were damaged, there
is nowhere to put the patients. People are homeless and without
food. We are using the jail cells to house some of them. There was
no room here tonight for the petty quarrels of wealthy men."

"Either that is an unusually sensible and
sensitive officer of the law, or Wolfe got a lot of baksheesh
passed around real quick," Pete remarked privately to
Gretchen/Duke.

The policeman had no idea, and no interest
in the itineraries of any of the parties involved when they left
his desk.

I know where we can check
on Gabriella, anyhow,"
Duke
said.

I don't care about
her,
Gretchen said
stubbornly.

Even if your hubby is with
her?
Duke asked wickedly.

Where do we go then?
Gretchen asked.

Duke decided to try to find a back route to
Gabriella's villa rather than braving the ruin of the Corniche
again. Besides, by the back route, they would pass the museum where
the woman worked. Not that she was likely to be there this
late.

That assumption was incorrect. The facade of
the museum building was striped and strobed with the revolving
multicolored lights of police cars, ambulances, and fire department
vehicles. From the interior, it was lit by the glow of amber
emergency lights from its in-house generator. Police directed
traffic, which consisted of a stream of ambulances, donkey carts,
taxis, trucks, and vans. These paused at the entrance long enough
to disgorge patients who were carried inside on litters, gurneys,
or, if small enough, in someone else's arms. Some limped in with
assistance.

Gretchen could not keep her
eyes on the road. Duke felt her pull toward the hospital.
I should help
, she
said.
They cannot possibly have enough
doctors.

Duke had to admit that except for maybe his
own murder, which could probably wait a little while, since he was
apparently already as dead as he was going to get, nothing they
were doing was as important as lending a hand here.

Gretchen said, "Pete, you
will take the motorbike and give transport to anyone strong enough
to rid,
ja
?"

"Ma'am, yes, ma'am," Pete said, saluting.
Duke smiled. When Gretchen got all dominatrix like that, it was all
either one of the guys could do to keep from making very bad Nazi
jokes.

Gretchen was no Nazi. She waded into the
hospital, took stock of what was happening and who was in charge,
walked up, said she was a doctor, a pediatric surgeon, and asked
where she was needed. The other docs were all women, too. Men
doctors didn't work on women in these countries. Though the wounds
looked pretty terrible to Duke, most of them were trauma, bones and
flesh that needed cleaning, setting, sewing. The anesthetic had to
be saved for the worst cases, and there were few painkillers. Lucky
kids had their moms there to comfort them. The others screamed in
Gretchen's ears, and in between her commands for instruments,
water, and bandages, she kept up a stream of baby talk in German
and snatches of little songs to try to lull the children or
distract them.

Kids with cuts and crushing injuries to arms
and legs, their faces dirty from debris and their noses snotty,
looked up at her with dark and frightened eyes. She smiled as if
they were in a playground in the park, cuddled them and sang to
them, and asked, "What's that over there?" very suddenly. While
they looked away, she did the part that hurt before they
noticed.

CHAPTER 23

Chimera groaned to see Leda seated at the
laboratory desk, the portable unit beside her. She hadn't taken it
away then. Why not?

Rasmussen, three of the guards, and the
contessa entered the lab at the same time as Chimera.

"Not
someone else to dispose of," Rasmussen complained, then nodded
to the guards. "Very well, shoot her."

Chimera evaded them and crossed swiftly to
the chair, placing his body between the guards and Leda. "If you
kill her, you will get no cooperation from us, no matter what."

Leda showed no gratitude for this brave
gesture. She said nothing, she moved nothing, just sat sprawled in
her relaxed position, her back to them, her head to one side. Then,
suddenly, she snorted and let out a long snore.

Almost apologetically, Chimera said, "She
was exhausted when she arrived. She is not even a witness, so you
can take the unit, kidnap us, and leave her alone. You have
murdered her father. There is no need to do her further harm."

"None except that the ridiculous woman and
her secrecy cost me the only significant find of that whole
expensive debacle in Alexandria."

Chimera moved slightly to make sure more of
Leda was covered. Doing so jostled the office chair, and her hand
slid against a piece of paper, which fell onto the floor. It looked
like a computer printout of some sort. And then Chimera saw the
mess from the broken sample vial.

"Ahhh," the scientist said.

"Ahhh
what
?"
Rasmussen demanded.

"She is sleeping the postblending sleep,"
Chimera said and stooped to retrieve the fallen paper.

"What's that?" Rasmussen asked.

"Oh, some data she had printed out for me
before the earthquake, judging from the date."

"Data about Cleopatra?"

"Yes. She brought me the tube Duke was
carrying when he was injured. Leda must have been very annoyed with
you and your friends, Mr. Rasmussen. She took material intended for
another and transferred it into herself."

"She
did?"
Rasmussen waved at the guards to
lower their weapons. "Well, I had not realized she was so highly
trained, Doctor. We hardly need you at all, do we? She can conduct
the entire transfer herself and besides, she now seems to possess
the
ba
of
Cleopatra."

"The
ba?"

"That is the name the ancient Egyptians gave
the personality and memories of an individual spirit. I'm surprised
you weren't aware of it before. It is the stuff you trade in with
this process of yours."

"How enlightening," Chimera said with an
ironic little nod.

"You will bring the machine with you,
Doctor. You three, carry her down to the yacht."

* * *

In the blended sleep,
Cleopatra was the first to make contact, to find the similarities
that would lead to a blend.
We are both
Philopater,
she said.
Both of us loved our fathers a great deal.

And both of our fathers
were murdered,
Leda added.

And once more, we are
surrounded by assassins,
Cleopatra
continued.

Someone said, "The more things change, the
more they stay the same."

Did they? Socrates perhaps? Or
Aristotle?

I was guessing Will Rogers,
myself,
Leda admitted.

But in spite of the thoughts flickering back
and forth between the two personalities, the blending sleep was
lovely and soft, a cocoon of luxury in which she had been borne
onto a ship very like her barge and then propelled with the speed
of a leopard over the waters. She did not physically see this, but
she felt the change in the air currents, smelled the sea, the
freshness on her skin, the soft pallet beneath her body when she
was deposited on the ship. As she slept, the common memories flowed
into each other as one channel of the Nile merged with another.

And elsewhere aboard the yacht, as they
slept, the strain of trying to appear forty years younger than his
eighty-five years caused Cesare Rasmussen a twinge of the pain that
he knew would someday herald his death.

* * *

Gabriella Faruk was a far different woman
than the fey and erudite creature Wilhelm Wolfe had entertained on
Kefalos. Though her tone on the phone had been anxious and
concerned, she still sounded bright and upbeat. However, the
sprightly curl of her hair was now a straggling tangle in need of
shampoo, her skin looked dull, and her eyes bore deep shadows
beneath them. She was tense, and each movement appeared to require
great effort.

She told Wolfe she had not slept since
leaving Alexandria two days before. She answered briefly and
noncommittally when Wolfe inquired about her aunt's well-being
since the blending. And though she might have slept on the plane on
the way to Alexandria, she appeared to be too agitated to do
so.