The Anubis Gates

He thought he caught a distant wink of glare, as of the sun reflecting on a lance head or polished helmet. Two hundred years ago, he thought, there was a purpose for the army of ex-slaves called the Mamelukes; but in today’s Egypt they’re an embarrassment that’s strangling the country, imposing a crushing and savagely enforced tax on anyone who seems to have money, and strong enough in force of arms to acknowledge no law but their own tastes. We couldn’t let them retain that kind of power, especially now that Mohammed Ali is in power and the eyes of the world are watching us, to gauge their own actions by what we do. Independence is within our reach again for the first time in thousands of years, and we can’t have it imperilled by a group of local brigands. How fortunate that Ali looks to the Master—through me—as his main advisor!

And if I return to England, he thought as he turned and watched the sweating slaves loading the signal cannon, it will be to disassemble the history of that nation, so that today—a new today—they’ll be nothing, probably a possession of France, which we’ll also impede. All we’ve got to do is rediscover the knowledge that died with the Romany ka—and we will before long, either through the completion of our calculations or, still conceivably, the wringing of some vital clue from that wretched ka we managed to draw of Brendan, Doyle before he got away from us.

That is a very long shot, though, he thought sourly, remembering last night’s interrogation as he walked down the stone steps to the narrow, sun-baked street outside the el-Azab gate.

The ka had been dragged out of its basement cell for the first time in at least a month, and for half an hour hadn’t even seemed to hear the questions the Master was putting to it, but just sat on the balcony chewing the end of its filthy beard and springing with little cries away from, evidently, imaginary insects. Finally it had spoken, though not in reply to any question. “I keep trying to stop them,” it had muttered, “from getting on the bike, you know? But it’s always too late, and they’re on the freeway before I can catch them, and I pull over ‘cause I don’t want to see it… But I hear it… the clank of the fall, and the grinding slide… and the smash of the helmet exploding against the pillar… “

“How did you exit the time stream?” the Master asked, for the fourth time.

“Jacky pulled me out,” the ka replied. “He threw a net over the little men and then pulled me into his canoe… “

“No, the time stream. How did you exit it?”

“It’s all one river, and the mile posts are calendar pages. If your keels be nimble and light, you may get there by candle light. The river is iced-over, you see—weren’t you listening when Darrow explained it?—but there’s a boat, with faces painted on the wheels, that can sail over the ice—the boat can come alive, and kill you… a black boat, blacker than the darkness… “

The Master had fallen into a fit of incoherent rage at this point, and had had to speak through one of the wax ushabti figures in the pen on the bottom of the sphere. “Take it away,” croaked the voice, “and stop the delivery of food to its cell—we don’t need it.”

Yes, a long shot, certainly—but still a possibility; after all, there were a couple of interesting hints of pattern in its ravings.