The Mammoth Book of the Mummy Read online

  “How long, Ruth?”

  “Soon, Frans.”

  For the first few pourings, Bak felt grand and important. The Chosen One. The King’s Servant. Defender of the Ritual. Bearer of the Bowl. Pourer of the Wax. Head Shabti.

  Now he’s just a bored man in a cave, dripping wax over a dead body that does not seem to appreciate it. Oh, for a bigger bowl!

  Pass five.

  Ruth looks around the room. The emir sits with his hands on his lap. Mourad checks some kind of grid in one of his binders. Lentini rocks on his chair with his arms folded, like he has a fever. Botha struts back and forth.

  I’ve wasted far too much time with these awful, ungrateful men, thinks Ruth. She makes a decision right then. After this is all over, I shall resign. Tell Mourad that she wants to activate the escape clause in her contract. Forfeit the share options; take the lump sum.

  Shake Lentini’s hand, promise to catch up soon, then never speak to him again.

  Tell Frans Botha to “fuck off.” To his face.

  Then get on a plane back to Boston and try again with Daniel.

  The wax is up to Mentuhotep’s head. The ears are already covered. With each bowl of wax in the coffin, the circle of liquid around his face grows smaller. Soon it will touch his mouth, then his nose. Then it will be done.

  I’m going to sleep under the stars tonight, thinks Bak. No entertainment, or intoxication. No company. I will just find a tree and sit under it.

  Just a few more bowls of wax.

  Bleep. Pass six complete.

  Ruth reads the figures off the screen. “Zero-zero. It’s done.”

  “Well done, Ruth, you dodged a bullet there.”

  What a pig. It’s not well done, you just reconstructed the brain of someone who has been dead for four millennia. Oh no, not Frans. For him, it’s just well done, you dodged a bullet. Botha really is an ungrateful, selfish, balding bully in a white coat.

  But he is oblivious to his behavior. For him, she is just another step in the process, and now he is elsewhere: The third “R” in the Triple R procedure.

  “Stephano? You ready for Resuscitation?”

  Lentini reappears from behind his monitors. “Yes, Doctor Botha. We are ready.”

  “Very well. Open the capsule.”

  The cauldron is still half full, but this is the last bowl Bak needs. He empties the wax over the king’s head, and the tip of the nose disappears into the opaque slime. That is the last anyone will see of Mentuhotep, thinks Bak. In this life, at least.

  Now, how do I get that great slab of rock down without it falling on me?

  It takes Dr Lentini the work of twenty seconds to undo the eight brackets that keep the fiberglass sarcophagus sealed. Ruth wonders why he does not delegate the task to one of the technicians from the Reinvigoration team.

  There is a sound of a seal being broken, of rubber losing suction, as Lentini flicks the final bracket. The lid springs up an inch or so. A dribble of saline spills through the gap between the upper and lower portions.

  Now the technicians are deployed. Four of them step forward and grab a corner of the lid. One of them leads the count: “Tha, ith, waa . . . ”

  The capsule is open. There is the sound of liquid moving around in the open container. Mentuhotep in his bath.

  Lentini flicks a switch on the side of the unit, and the sarcophagus seems to gurgle as the saline begins to drain. Ruth edges forward.

  As the capsule empties, the gray, shriveled skin of the pharaoh clings to the body like a wet paper towel in the laboratory sink. Ruth is sure that if she were to touch it, it would turn to wet porridge in her fingers. But where the ancient skin has split or detached, she can see the glistening bright red muscle, fresh from the Reinvigoration process. A transparent film of new skin cells keeps the tissue contained. Ruth thinks of sausages, packed with pink mince.

  Ruth moves her gaze upward to Mentuhotep’s face. Here the skin is stretched tight over the cheeks. The jaw is closed but the lips are drawn back, and the brittle yellow teeth, untouched by Reinvigoration, are exposed. The pharaoh grimaces, still dead, but on the verge of life. Healthier than Esther, under the sheet.

  Lentini returns to the side of the capsule with a delegation of technicians, and an electric resuscitation device.

  “Watch out, Ruth,” says Botha, standing behind her. “You don’t want a shock, do you?”

  Bak balances over the thin, cold edges of the sarcophagus. With one foot on each edge, he is astride the molten pool of wax. He can see the submerged shadow of the king’s body. How has it come to this?

  It’s a simple plan. He will grab the top of the lid, and pull it forward. As it moves, he will jump back, off the coffin and on to the floor. Nature will do the rest, and the weight of the stone will seal the king in place. Mentuhotep can set off to the afterlife, and Bak will take his freedom.

  It just needs to be a clean, definitive act.

  He takes a deep breath, and counts down, into the movement.

  Three, two, one . . .

  A new noise breaks his focus. A low rumble from outside.

  What was that?

  The high crack of the defibrillator makes Ruth blink.

  “Once more, Stephano,” orders Botha. He is studying a screen intently, and does not look up.

  “Clear!”

  Another crack.

  Lentini holds the paddles apart, and awaits further instructions.

  “That’s good,” says Botha. “Stand by for epinephrine, two hundred milligrams.” One of the technicians nods.

  Ruth looks over at the emir. He is gripping Mourad’s arm.

  “Okay, deploy.”

  The technician presses a button, and immediately steps back from the machine, as if that was his only task.

  Botha steps back too, and puts his hands on his head. They wait for him to speak, but he says nothing.

  “Well?” says the emir. Botha stays silent.

  Mourad shouts, “Tell us, did it work?”

  Enough of this, thinks Ruth. She strides over to the resuscitation computers. The lines on the monitor trace a familiar pattern.

  Two peaks, one higher than the other.

  “Yes, it worked,” says Ruth. “He’s alive.”

  Bak leaps down off the open coffin. Mentuhotep will have to wait a few more minutes.

  He edges down the passage out of the cave. Dust hangs thick in the air, and Bak coughs. Has something fallen? He grabs the corner of his tunic to cover his mouth, and creeps farther toward where the entrance is supposed to be. Thin rays of sun streak into the dirt cloud of the passageway. He is near the mouth of the cave, but boulders block the way.

  Botha has regained the power of speech. He is taking the opportunity to tap the emir for more money.

  “ . . . No, Highness, it is all down to you. And just think what we could do with a bigger facility.”

  Mourad blocks access. “Steady on, Frans, you’re not done here yet.”

  Botha chuckles. Touché. “Quite right, chum. Let’s wake him up, ya.”

  He nods to Lentini, who mutters something to a technician, the same one who administered the adrenaline. The lackey nonchalantly types something on the keyboard in front of him.

  Below the capsule, Ruth watches two of the automated delivery tubes wind into action. One moves slowly and deliberately, less than an inch. The other is more aggressive, and fires its entire payload through the cannula tubes and into the veins. It’s all transparent liquid in the end, but Ruth knows that the hormones within will tug into consciousness whatever brain they are injected into. Synthetic smelling-salts, designed to disturb even a four-thousand-year slumber.

  Ruth considers how much she hates her alarm clock. Anything less than a round seven hours and she is ready to throw it across the room. Thank goodness it is easier to shut up that hateful siren by pressing the snooze button. But she cannot sleep in any more. Anything past eight hours, and she feels guilty and irritable. Once you have a baby, something switches in
your body clock. I wonder if that is a synapse I can track down? she thinks. I could find it, and switch it back. Then it would be like when I was at college, young and free.

  “How are the signals looking, Ruth?”

  Whoops. She is not supposed to be musing on the duvets she has known.

  She flips over to the CT program that picks up the brain patterns. There is never a problem with Reignition at this stage. The connections through the brain have a kind of momentum. Once started, they keep going, so long as there is energy in the system. And now Mentuhotep’s heart has started beating again, he’s supplying that the old-fashioned way. The electrodes are still sticking out of his body, but they are entirely superfluous. Reincarnation chic, she thinks.

  And yet, these brain patterns are new. Angry lines oscillating. There is a lot of brain activity. Many synapses are firing. Perhaps the overload on the first pass has caused problems.

  Or perhaps it is something else?

  Botha is irate. “For Christ’s sake, Ruth. Today, please!”

  He probably should know about these fluctuations. They’re unusual, and perhaps he experienced it before, in the Shenzhen lab.

  “Frans, the patterns . . . ”

  “Speak up, my dear.”

  Ruth pauses for a moment before she speaks.

  “All good, here.”

  Voices from beyond the boulders. Bak shouts. He makes the loudest possible noise that his throat will allow. It makes his jaw hurt.

  A question wafts through the gaps in the rock. “Is that you, Bak?”

  Curses. It is Amenemhat.

  “I’m trapped,” screams Bak.

  “So you are.” The vizier’s voice lacks urgency. “That does limit your options.” He sounds relaxed, like he is having a conversation.

  “I need help to get out.”

  A moment of silence from beyond. Bak thinks he hears the clink of regalia bouncing off the stone. Then comes a question. “Do you really, Bak? Is your place not with your king?”

  Bak leans his forehead against the nearest boulder. “I have done my duty. Now I go free.” He thinks he hears a sigh from outside. “Duty does not end with the death of the Master, Bak. Every pharaoh needs a shabti!”

  What? Bak shifts himself so his ear is closer to the gap in the rocks.

  “Mentuhotep needs someone reliable and strong to serve him in the afterlife. That is why we have sealed the chamber.”

  So they did it on purpose. Bak suddenly feels foolish for trusting the vizier.

  “Traitor!” he screams. “The king said I was to go free!”

  This time, Amenemhat is quick to respond. “Not quite, Bak,” he shouts back. “Did you read the proclamation?”

  He and Bak both know that slaves cannot read.

  “The king said, did he not, that the knife he gave you would help you to freedom?”

  Bak thinks back to that dark conversation in Mentuhotep’s private chamber. He cannot remember what was said. But how would Amenemhat know about that conversation? He was conspicuously absent, off at the quarry.

  “Bak? Are you still there, Bak?”

  “Yes, of course I’m still here.”

  “Use the knife to free yourself, Bak. It is what the king intended. That is why he ordered that you be sealed in his burial chamber. You are the Chosen One.”

  “He stirs,” whispers Botha, as if he is stood over a baby’s cot.

  Fluid splashes on to the floor.

  “Sorry, Your Highness. We should have had that fully drained.”

  “Think nothing of it, Doctor.”

  Ruth looks down at her screen. The abnormal synaptic activity continues. And still, she says nothing.

  Curse them all! Curse Amenemhat. Curse Hena and the scribe. Curse the priests. Curse the king’s brother, who might have said something.

  And above all, thinks Bak, curse Mentuhotep, to whom I gave everything, and received nothing in return.

  Bak looks at the knife. Amenemhat is right. There is only one way out. Bak knows what he must do. It will be painful and it will take courage, but he has nothing else left.

  The coffin lies where Bak left it, with the stone lid standing tall above it. The wax is already starting to set, but the outline of the king’s corpse is still visible. A thin film of dust rests on the surface.

  Two strong slave arms pierce the flat molten liquid. The heat rushes up Bak’s arms like an animal bite, but the speed and purpose of the movement carries them further into the hot bath of the wax. He pushes his arms toward one another, and they hug the corpse. Two strong slave legs push against the side of the coffin, and the stiff body of the king is lifted out.

  Bak lets go of the corpse. It hits the floor with a damp thud.

  His arms feel cold and numb. He tries to make a fist with his hands, and they do as he asks, although he cannot feel the fingers bunched in his palms. No matter. He has no need for precision.

  He grabs the knife, Mentuhotep’s gift, and vaults back onto the top of the coffin, a foot planted either side. He looks beyond his toes, to the twisted body of the king, his enemy. Did he ever suppose, thinks Bak, that I might chase him into the afterlife?

  He does not pause, he does not flinch. The blade sinks deep into the wrist and slides neatly up to the joint. Blood, brown in the torchlight, streams down his arm.

  The knife falls. Bak steps forward, takes hold of the coffin lid, and leans back.

  For a moment he is floating.

  Then there is heat, and a bold deep noise.

  I curse you, Mentuhotep.

  Darkness.

  The body writhes and jerks in the sarcophagus.

  Botha smiles. “He is awake!”

  The numbers on Ruth’s monitor continue to rise.

  The emir leans closer. “A pharaoh stirs. Congratulations, Doctor.”

  He offers his hand to Botha.

  For a moment, they look at one another. It is a mere glance, a moment of courtesy, to acknowledge what has been accomplished. A few seconds when they regard one another, and not the body lying before them.

  But it is long enough. They do not see the red hand reach and tug at the electrodes that are still protruding from the flesh.

  Ruth watches as the strong arms pull at the metal rods. She tries to shout, but finds she cannot. And by the time she has found the breath to scream, Frans Botha has a blunt piece of metal sunk deep into his eye, and the wet, red body has set upon the emir with such animal ferocity that no one dare approach.

  Evie Donnelly isn’t exactly a hard-boiled detective—more soft-boiled—but she still walks some pretty mean streets in her steel-toed Mary Janes. Angela Slatter’s story is set in an alternative world in which, back at the turn of the century, the events of Bram Stoker’s Jewel of the Seven Stars weren’t all fictional. Evie’s 1950s San Francisco has echoes of Dashiell Hammett and a few other small literary references, along with more than one type of mummy.

  Egyptian Revival

  Angela Slatter

  “Are you a follower, Miss Donnelly?” The voice was smoky and the question not one I’d expected.

  People come to me because I find things, not because they care about which amulet I do or don’t wear beneath my shirt. They don’t give a rat’s ass what sacred name’s embroidered on my silky under-things, or whether a shrine does or doesn’t light up the corner of my fifth-floor office. They come because I’ve got a proven record of locating missing people and items. Generally, the client goes home happy. Mostly, I get paid.

  However, here was a possible patron, all blond brass and Dior dress—blue and cream with a cinched-in waist and matching swing coat—wanting to know if I was a follower. I pushed a stray curl behind my ear, and played dumb.

  “Of what, Mrs Kolchak? Fashion?” My functional green skirt and simple white blouse plainly said “no.” My custom-made Mary Jane pumps with the steel caps in the toes said, “Hell, no.”

  “Of the gods, Miss Donnelly,” she answered evenly. Her teeth were so neat they looke
d pressed. Then, as if I’d given an affirmative answer, she continued with, “And of which ones?”

  She herself wore no talisman, giving no hint as to what I should say, so I went with the truth, which wasn’t entirely a new thing for me, just not necessarily my first port of call.

  “I don’t follow a god, Mrs Kolchak. Didn’t follow any of the ones around before the Egyptians came back into style; don’t follow this latest crop; can’t imagine I’ll be following the next craze either.”

  “You’re an atheist?” She arched one perfect eyebrow, but it didn’t seem to make any of her skin wrinkle at all. Neat trick.

  “Call me an agnostic realist. Whatever’s out there probably has bigger things to worry about than the billion importuning prayers sent up—or down—every day.”

  My potential source of income bit at her pouty lower lip, as if considering my future, and I silently cursed the human mania for hitching hopes and dreams to invisible friends. Fifty or so years ago, when the dead-but-determined-not-to-remain-so Queen Tera managed to resurrect herself with the aid of the Jewel of the Seven Stars, ancient Egyptian religion underwent a revival—how could it not? Forgotten gods found a foothold once again; prayers of the sometimes barely convinced faithful thundered from freshly erected temples, and the pantheon of Kemet made a place for itself among all the other belief systems as if it hadn’t been gone longer than five minutes—especially here in San Francisco where outré is normal. Me, I think religion’s like adding rocks to a body of water: the liquid just shifts around, displaces, to accommodate whatever’s added. No one really notices when it disappears either, though most people don’t admit that.

  The restoration didn’t matter one whit to someone like me, but to those further up the economic and social ladder it mattered a lot. If you wanted a certain job or promotion, membership in a particular club, the right house in the right part of town—then your choice of personal divinity could make all the difference. Small fry and ordinary folk mostly held to their Holy Trinity credos, Torahs, Buddhist chants, or what have you, but those with cash and position were happy to pay lip service to the new-old ways, and their willingness to do what was needed to prove devotion could, and did, open doors.