“My son . . .”
“You’ll have to wait.” An elderly woman behind the counter cut him off. She waved a hand toward the waiting room. “They are all sick.”
Dhatt signed an admittance sheet, then shuffled back to his wife, who had found a spot on the floor to sit down. They waited nearly an hour before a young woman in a white coat appeared from behind the counter and began examining the patients in the waiting area. “There is no more space in the examination room,” she announced. “Just stay where you are, and I’ll come to you.”
The room had swelled to overflowing by the time she reached the Dhatts. The doctor took their son’s pulse, then called to an assistant. An intravenous solution bag was brought over, and the doctor injected a peripheral line into the boy’s arm. “Hold this up,” she instructed, passing the bag to Dhatt.
“The boy . . . Will he be all right?” Dhatt asked.
“Yes, I think so. You are lucky you brought him when you did. We will run out of medical supplies before long.”
“Is it cholera? We are careful with the water.”
The doctor nodded. “Careful does not matter in this instance. The entire city seems to be infected, even Bandra. And more lethally than usual.” She motioned her eyes toward a woman behind her in a green shawl, then quickly moved on to the next patient.
Dhatt sat with his wife on the floor, keeping the IV bag elevated. As he waited to see signs of improvement in his son, he glanced at the woman in the shawl.
She was sitting on the floor across the room, mumbling to herself, while rocking an infant in her arms. Dhatt caught a brief glimpse of the baby and saw with sadness that it was dead. The mother had refused to give it up, however, and just sat there, rocking, for hours.
It would not be the last dead child he would witness. A steady stream of parents left the clinic in grief, unable to save their young from the quick-striking disease. Their anguished wails mixed with the cries of the suffering children.
The overworked doctor circled back sometime later and removed the empty IV bag. “Your son looks better. I’m afraid that is all I can do for you. Take him home. And keep him hydrated.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
Dhatt studied his son with relief. His eyes were fully open now, and he seemed to have more strength. He would be one of the lucky ones. Dhatt just felt it in his soul.
The tuk-tuk driver helped his wife up and stepped to the door. Something had bothered him ever since he had arrived at the clinic, and he hesitated at the door in search of an answer. He looked around the crowded room, studying the parents and their sick children. It took a moment to realize what was wrong. And then it struck him.
All of the sick children in the clinic were boys.
19
EGYPT
Is it really a funerary boat?”
Dr. Rodney Zeibig rose from a dusty pit, where he’d been hunched over an exposed wooden beam delicately scraping away hard-packed sand. A portable canopy overhead blocked the intense rays of the Egyptian sun. Even in the shade the temperature hovered around the century mark. A hot breeze off the nearby Nile River didn’t make things any more comfortable. Zeibig removed an Indiana Jones fedora and wiped his forehead, then looked up into the soft blue eyes of a young blond woman standing above him.
“It wasn’t built as such, by my reckoning.” He pointed to a parallel pair of trenches that extended from the square pit. Aged wooden planks embedded in the bottom sand stretched more than fifty feet.
“This has all the makings of a sekhet boat, or work barge, likely used to haul granite or alabaster from quarries upriver. It’s heavily constructed, has a flat bottom, and even a hint of green paint on its sides.” He looked at the beam. “The classic funerary barges were unpainted, and along with the royalty ships, were built with curved hulls in the shape of the earlier Egyptian reed rafts.” He smiled. “But I’m just a visiting marine archeologist who arrived on the site yesterday. With the other team members off for supplies, you best consult your eminent Egyptologist and fearless expedition leader.”
He turned to a tanned, older man in khaki who was directing a pair of laborers across the field. “Harry. Your benefactor would like to know where the tomb is.”
With a jolly grin, Dr. Harrison Stanley, emeritus professor of Egyptology from Cambridge, scurried over to the pair. “Now, Riki Sadler, I didn’t mean to lead you astray last week when I told you there may be a tomb here. That’s just a hunch.”
“Mr. Zeibig says this is a cargo vessel, not a funerary boat.” She spoke in the same refined British accent as Stanley.
“Well, I happen to think it is both. But Rodney is quite right, it does appear to be a sekhet used to haul stone from Aswan. The question is, why did it end up here, near a residential palace? The answer may lie in the discovery we made off its bow, which makes for an interesting interpretation.”
He hopped into the pit and waved for Riki and Zeibig to follow. The lithe young woman climbed down after Stanley, with Zeibig right behind. Stanley trekked along one of the narrow trenches, following it through a ninety-degree bend into an enlarged pit. He took an additional step down and stopped in front of a partially exposed slab of limestone. Riki crept alongside him and peered at the artifact.
Barely two feet square, the stone slab’s upper and lower surfaces featured carved bands of hieroglyphics. The center section’s bas-relief depicted several animals, some pots and jugs, and a round loaf of bread. Beneath the carvings were two small indented basins, and between them the image of a boy standing on a vessel.
“Is it an offering table?” Riki asked.
“Well done!” Stanley said.