The Mummy (Ramses the Damned 1)

Well, thank the gods it could not work on an ancient dead thing! Thank the gods the horrid potion had its limits.

He drew out a cheroot now and lighted it, and enjoyed the smoke. He poured a little brandy in the glass and drank it.

Slowly the room lightened around him. He wanted to creep back into Julie's arms, and lie there. But that could not be done by day, he knew it. And the truth was, he liked young Savarell enough not to deliberately hurt him. And Elliott, of course, he did not want to injure on any count. Very little stood between real friendship with Elliott.

When he heard the first sounds of the others on deck, he capped the vial and slipped it back into his moneybelt. He got up to change his clothes. Then suddenly a sound startled him.

The cabin was now entirely visible in a bluish morning light. For a moment he dared not turn around. Then again he heard that sound! A scratching.

He could feel the blood pounding in his temples. At last he wheeled around and stared down at the thing. The hand was alive! The hand was moving. On its back it lay, groping, flexing, rocking on the desk, and finally it fell over like a great scarab onto its five legs, and scratched at the blotter.

He found himself shrinking back from it in horror. It moved forward on the desk, groping its way, struggling, and then suddenly it moved over the edge and fell to the floor with a thud at his feet.

A prayer in the oldest Egyptian escaped his lips. Gods of the underworld, forgive my blasphemy! Trembling violently, he resolved to pick it up, but he could not bring himself to do it.

Like a madman he looked around the room. The food, the tray of food that was always there for him. There would be a knife. Quickly he found it, a sharp paring knife, and grabbing it he stabbed the hand and thrust it down on the desk, its fingers curling as if reaching for the very blade.

He flattened it with his left hand and then stabbed it again and again, and finally cut the tough leathery flesh and bones into pieces. It was spurting blood, living blood. Ye gods, and the pieces were still moving. They were turning pink, the color of healthy flesh, in the growing light.

He hurried into the little bathroom, gathered up a towel and came back, and scooped all the bloody fragments into it. Then closing the towel over them, he pounded them with the handle of the knife, and then with the heavy base of the lamp, the cord of which he'd ripped from the socket. He could still feel movement in the bloody mass.

He stood there weeping. Oh, Ramses, you fool! Is there no limit to your folly! Then he gathered up the bundle, ignoring the warmth he could feel through the cloth, and went out on the deck and emptied the towel over the dark river.

In an instant the bloody little pieces disappeared. He stood there, bathed in sweat, the bloody towel hanging from his left hand, and then that too he committed to the deep. And the knife as well. And then he settled back against the wall, peering at the far bank of golden sand and the distant hills, still a pale violet in the morning.

The years dissolved. He heard the weeping in the palace. He heard his steward screaming before he had reached the throne room doors and forced them open.

"It's killing them, my King. They are retching, vomiting it up; they are vomiting blood with it."

"Gather it all up, burn it!" he'd cried. "Every tree, every bushel of grain! Throw it into the river."

Folly! Disaster.

But he had been only a man of his time, after all. What had the magicians known of cells and microscopes and true medicine?

Yet he couldn't stop hearing those cries, cries of hundreds, as they stumbled out of the houses; as they came into the public square before the palace.

"They are dying, my King. It's the meat. It is poisoning them."

"Slay the remaining animals."

"But, my King ..."

"Chop them into pieces, do you hear? Throw them into the river!"

He looked down now into the watery depths. Somewhere far upstream, the tiny bits and pieces of the hand still lived. Somewhere deep, deep in the muck and mire, the grain lived. The bits and pieces of those ancient animals lived!

I tell you it is a horrible secret, a secret that could spell the end of the world.

He went back into his cabin, and bolting the door, he sank down in the chair at the desk, and wept.

It was noon when

he came out on deck. Julie was in her favourite chair, reading that ancient history which was so full of lies and gaps it made him laugh. She was scribbling a question in the margin, which of course she would put to him, and he would answer.

"Ah, you're awake at last," she said. And then seeing the expression on his face, she asked: "What is it?"

"I'm done with this place. I want to visit the pyramids, the museum, what one must visit. And then I want to be gone from here."