Pyramids Read online

  PYRAMIDS

  By

  Fred Saberhagen

  * * *

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  * * *

  YOU ARE HERE TO ROB THE PYRAMIDS? COME THEN:

  THE MONSTROUS GODS OF ANCIENT EGYPT AWAIT YOU…

  It was near sunset when Scheffler, scanning the passing desert floor through the transparent deck below his feet, looked up sharply at a sudden change of light. Something had just gone wrong with the sky; it was filled with broad swirling streaks of color. And it wasn't only the sky: the shadows on the landscape below, including the tenuous shadow of the translucent, speeding ship itself, were dancing madly as the sun began moving crazily in a broad figure-eight pattern. After a time it touched the horizon, far south of its usual place of setting, and then sat there, throwing long shadows across the land.

  "The collective Egyptian mind, I suppose?" asked Scheffler.

  * * *

  FRED SABERHAGEN

  PYRAMIDS

  BAEN

  BOOKS

  * * *

  PYRAMIDS

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1987 by Fred Saberhagen

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  260 Fifth Avenue

  New York, N.Y. 10001

  First printing, January 1987

  ISBN: 0-671-65609-0

  Cover art by David Mattingly

  Printed in the United States of America

  Distributed by

  SIMON & SCHUSTER

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, N.Y. 10020

  ONE

  There were too many monsters in the apartment to suit Scheffler. Or in some of the bedrooms anyway, though all were clean and otherwise suitably furnished. Going up and down the hallway, looking for a room to make his own, he found them all dusted and swept and ready for occupation. Even the beds were neatly made. The biggest bedroom was out of the running, of course, being already occupied by the old man's things, obviously the place where he slept when he was home. And it had more than its share of monsters; clearly the old man relished them.

  The next room down the hall from the old man's was plenty big enough for Scheffler, and looked quite comfortable except for a set of three monsters, very nearly life-sized, which were enough to put him off. Two of the figures were standing to one side of the old-fashioned brass bed, one on the other. The three statues were of painted wood or stone or plaster; he couldn't immediately be sure of the material just by looking at them. The colors of all three were just as bright as if they had been applied yesterday in Chicago instead of thousands of years ago in ancient Egypt.

  From the neck down all three of the standing figures looked human, their brown-skinned bodies wearing heavy jeweled collars and white skirts or loincloths that fell in simple carven folds. From the neck up it was a different matter. One statue had the head of a green crocodile, the second that of a black-feathered hawk, and the third a head unlike any that Scheffler had ever beheld on man or beast before. He couldn't tell if it was meant to represent a ram or a bull or something else altogether. Whatever it was, he didn't relish the thought of waking up in the middle of the night, in an unfamiliar room, surrounded by these three looming shadow-shapes in conference.

  He could have moved them out, but it was easier just to pick another room. When you were about to become the sole tenant of an apartment of fifteen rooms, you had a lot of choices. Scheffler moved on to the next bedroom down the hall, found it free of any disturbing presence, and dumped his duffel bag and backpack and minor packages on the floor. Peeling off his winter jacket, he threw it atop the pile. This room was a little smaller, but that was all right. As long as he had a bed and a chest of drawers and a handy bathroom—every bedroom in this place apparently had its own bathroom attached—he didn't need much else in the way of housing. He would do his homework about ten doors away in the study, where as he recalled there was plenty of table space, and about a million books.

  From the window of his finally chosen bedroom, twelve stories above Lake Shore Drive, Scheffler could look east as far as the fog-bound horizon of the wintry lake. Sighting at an angle to the north, through a forest of other tall apartment buildings, most of them taller and much newer than the one in which he stood, he was able to catch a glimpse of the lakeside campus of St. Thomas More University. Commuting to class from here was going to be as easy as staying home, or very nearly so. When warm weather came again, sometime in the remote spring, he would retrieve his bicycle from the friend's house where it was stored. He ought to be able to wheel to school in only a few minutes along the path traversing the lakeside park. Meanwhile, even under the worst conditions, he could walk the distance in well under half an hour. When classes resumed after New Year's, Scheffler wasn't going to have to fight the city's surface transportation problems any more. Nor was he going to have to cope any longer with the problems of three roommates in an apartment vastly smaller than this one.

  Opening the duffel bag, he started to hang up some clothes in his new closet. Far back in the dim recess there was a bathrobe—or maybe it ought to be called a dressing gown—already hanging, that looked and felt like silk. Maybe it would fit him. Uncle Monty had urged him to make himself at home.

  Scheffler unpacked the rest of his modest belongings, throwing some items into the otherwise empty drawers of the dresser, and establishing himself in his new private bath. All of the plumbing fixtures he'd seen so far in the apartment were modern. Obviously there'd been some remodeling during the past few years.

  Having taken possession of a bedroom, Scheffler went back out to the elegantly carpeted hallway, and stood for a few moments looking from left to right and back again, appreciating the quiet. He still had a lot to investigate. This was only the second time he'd been in the apartment, and there was a lot of territory in it that hadn't been covered when his great-uncle had given him the tour on his first visit.

  Scheffler turned to his right, and strode along the hallway toward what he had already begun to call, in his own mind, the museum wing.

  The apartment occupied the building's entire twelfth floor, and its floor plan was L-shaped. The hallway on this north-south leg of the L, where the bedrooms were, put Scheffler somewhat in mind of a hotel corridor, with rooms opening mostly to his right, and windows, in the alcoves of the wall on his left, looking out over the city. This afternoon the city's atmosphere was dim with post-Christmas, late December murk, and a lot of lights in other buildings had been turned on.

  Some of the rooms over on the east-west leg of the L had good views of the central skyscrapers of the Loop, which were partially visible to the south beyond other buildings of intermediate height; other rooms, on the north side, looked out at more tall apartments, with here and there a glimpse of Lake Michigan.

  Th
e front and rear entrances of the apartment building were actually quite close together, near the angle of the L. The normal passenger elevators ascended from the lobby there, and the service elevators from just inside the alley entrance. Here too was the service stair that doubled as interior fire escape. And the largest rooms of the Chapel apartment were near the angle too. Scheffler, passing at this moment through the dining room, impulsively detoured a few steps to see if great-uncle Monty might have left the tall, imposing liquor cabinet unlocked. It turned out that he had, and that the cabinet was well stocked. Not that Scheffler cared all that much about booze, but it was interesting to see that he and the daily housekeeper, Mrs. White, were both apparently considered trustworthy. Attached to the liquor cabinet was a wine rack, holding a score of bottles resting on their sides. Well, maybe Scheffler would try just a sample now and then—Uncle Monty had told him to make himself at home—but there'd be no wild student parties.

  Scheffler moved on, running his fingers along the carven backs of five of the twelve near-antique chairs that surrounded the mahogany dining table. There was no dust on any of them. Mrs. White was thorough. He planned to do most of his own eating in the kitchen, where there was a radio, and a table built on a human scale.

  From the dining room he progressed into what the old man had called the parlor. This room was a whole apartment in itself, with enough furniture in it for a small house. Still, it wasn't crowded. Here too were a few ancient Egyptian monster statues. An alabaster lampstand, a grandfather clock, and some other furniture that in most houses would have looked very old. Some of the pieces went back decades, maybe even a century, to the era of fringed lampshades and overstuffing. Scheffler had only a vague idea of the dates of different styles of furniture, but in this place a century was only yesterday.

  There were some modern items too, but it occurred to Scheffler as he passed through the room this time that he had yet to see a television set anywhere in the apartment. Unless one of those cabinets over there… but he'd look into that later. The lack of a TV wasn't going to bother him especially.

  Like the monster statues in the bedrooms, the Egyptian artifacts in this part of the house appeared to be undamaged by the ages. In feet they looked quite new. No wonder some of those purchasers, decades ago, had begun to grow suspicious… anyway, Scheffler's uncle had told him that none of the stuff displayed so casually in this room was really valuable. There was valuable and valuable, of course. Maybe Uncle Monty scorned these things, but Scheffler didn't think he could afford to buy one if he broke it.

  He had left the central area of the apartment behind him now, and was proceeding on down the east-west hallway into the museum wing. From here on, he remembered, things got stranger. Certain objects in these rooms ahead had been puzzling him ever since his first visit, and now he wanted to take a look at them again.

  The first door on Scheffler's right in this new hallway was standing open. Inside was the library. When he touched the modern switch just inside the door, indirect fluorescents came on in the book-lined alcoves, where shadowy afternoon had almost become night. Green-shaded work lamps came alive at the two broad tables. For anyone who liked books it was an inviting atmosphere, that of the office or study just waiting for the scholar to come in. All it needed was a fire blazing in the hearth; and there was even an actual fireplace, with some packaged wood beside it. One incongruous element in the library was a tall gun cabinet, containing half a dozen rifles or shotguns, along with a couple of revolvers, obscured behind a glass door thickly reinforced with metal bars. Scheffler tried the door and found it locked. The firearms were held in place by an additional locked rod run through their trigger guards.

  There were only a couple of bits of sculpture in this room—Egyptian again, of course—and these were relatively small and unobtrusive. If he couldn't get his homework done in here, he never would. There was even, Scheffler noticed now, a small electronic typewriter at one of the tables, and a stack of white paper beside it, though no evidence of any work actually in progress.

  And, of course, there were the books. Most of the wall space was paneled from floor to ceiling with built-in shelves. Scheffler strolled into the room now and took a volume down at random: Recherches sur plusiers points de lastronomie égyptienne, written by Jean Baptist Biot. Published in Paris, 1823. Old, all right. Next to it was Langen und Richtungen der vier Grundakten der Grossen Pyramide bei Gise. By Ludwig Borchardt, Berlin, 1926. Practically new.

  Most of the books were in English, and newer than those two. He walked about, continuing his random sampling of the volumes. If this technique was truly giving him a fair representation of the whole, he thought he must be standing in the middle of just about everything that had ever been written on the subject of Egypt, in English or any other language. There was one book at least in what Scheffler thought must be Arabic. No Chinese, as far as he could tell, but he wouldn't have been surprised. Some took in wider subjects, such as the whole Near East and Middle East, and one shelf, holding only very recent books, was devoted to the technical aspects of archaeology in general. He took down a pamphlet only a few months old, that discussed in abstruse high-tech language some current project of probing the pyramids' interiors with cosmic rays.

  Then he came to a stop. There, behind glass on a shelf slightly above eye level, were an old wax-cylinder phonograph and a modern tape recorder. Beside the phonograph were a couple of the dark cylinders that were its records. Thanks to memories of his grandmother's attic in Des Moines, Scheffler could identify them for what they were. It was true, of course, that Uncle Monty had been working away at this stuff for half a century or more.

  Opening another glass-doored cabinet, Scheffler to satisfy his curiosity pulled out scrolls of thick, unusual, creamy-feeling paper. He undid one scroll and found it covered with what were, for all he could tell, genuine Egyptian hieroglyphics. To his inexpert eye, at least, the small pictographs appeared to have been painted on by hand.

  Enough. More than enough. He had been told to make himself at home, but he had the feeling now that he was prying into things that he was expected to leave alone.

  From the library a wide doorway opened directly into the next room to the west. This was almost as large as the library, and it also was a workroom of sorts. A good share of the floor space was taken up by a central built-in table, about seven feet square and sturdily constructed, as if it were meant to support a model railroad. It held a model, all right, but there were no tracks or trains. Plaster of Paris, or some similar substance, had been built and carved into the shape of a four-sided pyramid, occupying almost the entire tabletop, and tipped at the very apex with a dot of what looked like gold. The pale pyramid was readily accessible from all sides, and well lighted from above, once Scheffler had found the proper wall switch.

  If you looked closely at the pyramid you could see the dark lines where it must come apart in sections, presumably to allow study of the interior. For about three-fourths of the way up, each sloping side of the pyramid was a series of perhaps a hundred tiny steps; and from each of the four corners of the base a narrow ramp went slanting up across the steps at a gentle grade, to make a right-angled turn at the next corner and go on up again, clinging to the steep sides. The ramps ended at the level where the sides became smooth, about a quarter of the way down from the tiny golden apex.

  During his brief tour of the apartment a week ago, Scheffler had naturally noticed this model pyramid and commented on it. His great-uncle Monty had explained how, in the real pyramid, the ramps had been used to haul up the blocks of stone used in construction.

  Scheffler had wanted to make some intelligent response. "I seem to remember reading somewhere that there are still different theories on the pyramids. The way they were constructed, I mean."

  "There are different theories," Uncle Monty had admitted, in his dry, slightly rasping voice. He had been standing in the doorway, leaning his gaunt body slightly against the jamb. Dapper in a dark suit and flamboyant tie
, the old man managed to look considerably younger than his age, which from all that Scheffler had heard had to be somewhere in the late seventies. "There are different theories. But this is how the Great Pyramid at Giza was constructed."

  At that point the rasping inflexible voice had paused, and the gray eyes under the bushy gray brows gave Scheffler a hard stare, through fashionable modern steel-rimmed glasses. "Have you taken any courses in astronomy?"

  "Astronomy? No, sir. Not at the university, anyway. I did have an astronomy course in high school. Back in Iowa. You mean the pyramids were oriented to the stars somehow?"

  "Oh yes. Many of them were. This one certainly was." The old man gestured toward the model, an impatient flick of the wrist. There were gold rings, one with a green jewel, on two of the gnarled but still active ringers. "The Great Pyramid at Giza," he repeated. "Built by the great Pharaoh Khufu to be his eternal tomb, and the eternal repository of his treasure." The old eyes and the old voice were for some reason judging that repository, and perhaps the Pharaoh, harshly. "And it served also as the base of departure for his spirit to its place among the stars… that pyramid was already ancient, of course, when Tutankhamen lived and died, of whom we hear so much. It had been in place for more than a thousand years when Abraham of the Old Testament was born."

  "There are three of them there now, aren't there? Three large pyramids, near Cairo?"

  "Yes. This was the first, and remains the largest." Suddenly Scheffler's great-uncle had seemed to be trying to make up his mind about something. "Look here, ah, Tom. There's a certain unfairness about what I'm doing, going off like this on short notice, turning over the care of this apartment to you. I want you to know I plan to make it up to you."