The Mummy (Ramses the Damned 1)

Samir walked slowly to the door.

"If you need me," he said, turning back, "you must send for me." He reached into his coat. He took out his card and stared at it, quite baffled for a moment. Then he gave it to the man. He watched the ring glinting in the light as the man took it from him.

"I am in my office at the British Museum very late every night. I walk the corridors when everyone is gone. Come to the side door, and you will find me."

But why was he saying these things? What did he mean to convey? He wished suddenly the creature would speak the ancient tongue again; he could not understand the strange mixture of pain and joy that he felt; the strange darkening of the world, and the keen appreciation of light which had come with that darkening.

He turned and went out, hurrying down the granite steps and past the uniformed guards without so much as a glance in their direction. He walked fast through the cold damp streets. He ignored the cabs that slowed. He wanted only to be alone. He kept seeing that ring; hearing those old Egyptian words finally defined aloud as he had never heard them. He wanted to weep. A miracle had been revealed; yet somehow it threatened the miraculous all around him.

"Lawrence, give me guidance," he whispered.

Julie shut the door and slipped the bolt.

She turned to Ramses. She could hear Rita's tread on the floor above. They were alone, quite beyond Rita's hearing.

"You don't mean to trust him with your secret!" she asked.

"The harm is done," he said quietly. "He knows the truth. And your cousin He

nry will tell others. And others, too, will come to believe."

"No, that's impossible. You saw yourself what happened with the police. Samir knows because he saw the ring; he recognized it. And because he came to see, and came to believe. Others will not do that. And somehow ..."

"Somehow?"

"You wanted him to know. That's why you addressed him by name. You told him who you were."

"Did I?"

"Yes, I think that you did."

He pondered this. He didn't find the idea too agreeable. But it was true, she could have sworn so.

"Two who believe can make three," he said, as if she hadn't made the point at all.

"They cannot prove it. You're real, yes, and the ring is real. But what is there really to connect you with the past! You don't understand these times if you think it takes so little for men to believe that one has risen from the grave. This is the age of science, not religion."

He was collecting his thoughts. He bowed his head and folded his arms and moved back and forth on the carpet. Then he stopped:

"Oh, my darling dear, if only you understood," he said. There was no urgency in his voice, but there was great feeling. And it seemed the cadence was English now, almost intimately so. "For a thousand years I guarded this truth," he said, "even from those I loved and served. They never knew whence I came, or how long I'd lived, or what had befallen me. And now I've blundered into your time, revealing this truth to more mortals in one full moon than ever knew it since Ramses ruled Egypt."

"I understand," she said. But she was thinking something else quite different. You wrote the whole story in the scrolls. You left them there. And that was because you could not bear this secret any longer. "You don't understand these times," she said again. "Miracles aren't believed, even by those to whom they happen."

"What a strange thing to say!"

"Were I to shout it from the rooftops no one would believe. Your elixir is safe, with or without these poisons."

It seemed a shock of pain went through him. She saw it. She felt it. She regretted her words. What madness to think this creature is all powerful, that his ready smile doesn't conceal a vulnerability as vast as his strength. She was at a loss. She waited. And then his smile, once again, came to her rescue.

"What can we do but wait and see, Julie Stratford?"

He sighed. He removed his frock coat, and walked away from her into the Egyptian room. He stared at the coffin, his coffin, and then at the row of jars. He reached down and carefully switched on the electric lamp, as he had seen her do, and then looked up at the rows and rows of books rising over Lawrence's desk to the ceiling.

"Surely you need to sleep," she said. "Let me take you upstairs to Father's room."

"No, my darling dear, I do not sleep, except when I mean to take leave of life for the time being."

"You mean ... day in and day out, you need no sleep whatsoever!"