'Your Majesty! If you could just turn this way...'
The man had an American accent, but he looked Chinese. He had used the wrong form of address as usual, but the High Supreme Ruler of the Two Egypts and the Greater World had long since ceased trying to insist, just as he had ceased trying to account for all the languages and races and strangeness of the time travellers. The small silver thing, the camera, flashed in Cheops's eyes, dazzling him for a moment.
He tried to smile. 'I think you will find -' he began, hesitant as always in the tourist language, but a tour guide was striding across the stone floor in her sea-blue uniform, already shouting at him.
'Mister Chee! I'm sorry but I really must ask you to put your camera away! The fabrics and materials here are very sensitive to the light.'
Mr Chee's expression became flat, threatening. 'I paid money,' he said. 'Good money, as good as the next man's. Are you saying I can't take pictures?'
The guide was facing him know, unintimidated by his anger. 'The materials of the Throne and the Pharaoh's costume are quite irreplaceable.'
'Because no one can do that any more,' said Cheops, but both guide and tourist ignored him. The fabric that made his cloak and covered the throne had been soaked for hours in the clear Nile water, the colours flowing in, flowing out, like blood in a vein, a hundred times for the floods, a hundred times for the blood of the Hundred Gods -
But the Nile water was no longer clear, it was slicked with oil from the tourists' boats, and their factories, and their markets, and their cars.
Mr Chee was still talking. 'Stop me if I'm wrong, but I thought that we'd travelled in time, like, in time, so surely these people can make some more of this lapis blue or whatever it is? I mean, it's not like this is a museum or something!'
Cheops knew what a museum was, and knew that his Kingdom had become one of those dead places. He touched the Ring of Power, with its gold cast of Osiris, but knew that Mr Chee had more power in the batteries of his camera than the Ring had in Egypt now. The Pharaoh looked round at the great hall, at the Italian marble and Indian gold that dressed the vast sandstone blocks his father's slaves had dragged along the valley of the Nile two generations ago. The doors were blue glass, fretted with gold, a time traveller invention. When they opened, it was done by a machine, which made a slight humming sound. The guards stood by, resplendent and holy, and the women flapped the long fronds of palm, but they were gestures, camera-fodder; the guards unarmed, the women unneeded in the air-conditioned throne room.
Mr Chee and the tour guide were still arguing in low voices near the door. A bare-armed woman wearing black had joined them. It was probably Mr Chee's wife. Cheops became suddenly conscious of the sweat dribbling down inside the gold breastplate of his costume. He stood up, hoping to retreat to the inner courtyard of this tourist's temple. He would still be watched, walking amongst the low palms and hibiscus, but at least the air was green and soothing, and less hot.
'O Supreme One!'
The words of the address were correct, but the tone was brisk. The man in the blue and yellow uniform had a tense, watchful expression. 'I'm sorry, but we must ask for another hour before you leave. There is a party of over sixties from Boston due shortly.'
Cheops nodded, and sat down. He understood his obligations. Gold and machinery had a cost, and he could not say that he had not understood that cost when he had made his agreement with the time travellers, though perhaps he had not grasped the depth of the river indemnity he had entered, the full extent of its flood.
'Is there anything we can bring for your comfort, O Supreme One?'
It was one of his own guards, resplendent in lapis and brass armour and peacock-feather head-dress, bowing low as he spoke.
'All is well.' Cheops forced himself to speak as a Pharaoh should speak to a mortal, and the young man responded as he should, by silently backing away, still bowing, the peacock feathers swaying like flowers in the wind; but Cheops saw the slight twitch of the guard's lips below the gilded face-paint, the suppressed laughter, and knew that the laughter would escape when the guard went off-duty tonight and drank beer in the American bar, wearing his Levis and Nike trainers. The laughter would escape just as the life of Egypt had escaped, to be pissed down the river in the dead of night. Cheops saw that his fists were clenched with anger.
'I sold -' He began to say it, then stopped, shook his head at the alien concept. He had not sold out, he had not sold his soul. He had made a stupid mistake. He had bargained with the Trickster, and that is a trade that the Gods themselves always lose. Why had he thought he would win?
A movement caught his eye: a young man pushing his way through the crowd, his belt crude stained bullock hide -
- but it is the belt of a Pharaoh -
- his face angry, sweat-streaked and watchful -
- and it is my face and he is looking at me and he knows what I have done -
The young man pulled a knife from his belt, long bladed, iron, but the point as sharp as glass. Cheops heard a woman's scream, saw the Levis-and-Nike guard moving away (but why should he defend him?) and before he could move the knife was deep within him, felt as an oddness, the pain afterwards and the blood spurting out, more screaming over the ringing in his ears, but it was that face, that face looking down at him, curved and cruel and familiar.
'You betrayed me.'
He thinks I am his father.
Cheops tried to reply, tried to tell the young man the truth before it was too late, but his breath was gone, he could only stare as the world went white and Horus came to greet him, his huge wings flapping slowly, slowly, his great falcon's beak descending on Cheops's chest, to pull out his heart and eat it.
