“I’m you,” Shaman said. He was looking out into the desert, not at me. He drilled without spirit, like a drunken tarrier, never noticing how dull his bit was since my epochй. “I’m you”?a tired song, water on water; I’d seen my fulcrum, I’d glimpsed who I was, though I too was tired.
Shaman angled and bobbed his head, peering past his Space People at Izzy’s band. “Peripherized,” he muttered. “The sly dog!”
He turned toward me and lifted his chin; I knew he wanted me to come to him, to stand at his side. My body felt leaden. My pulse echoed in my skin. I had to leave Nora and go to him. He put his arm around my shoulders.
Down below, the Space People leaned toward us like heliotropes to the sun. Sarvaduhka was hugging Izzy’s saddle bags. Lila covered her eyes and drew her head down between her shoulders as if she could withdraw like a turtle into its shell. The force of Shaman’s thought flung Johnny Abilene into the sand; posing there before the glass, Shaman spoke to everyone?inside their own heads.
“This is my property. He’s me. Here is my fountain, my ancient spring. He’s me. His deep waters sired and nurtured me until I ripped out my umbilicus and dammed Abu for my own pleasure. He’s me. Abu will remain on Earth forever. Abu?He’s me?is my eternal life.”
“But Shaman,” I said, “I’m not you.”
38. Officer Domingo’s Conclusion
Izzy was ransacking his saddle bags, as if Plan B were in there. Lila had climbed down off her horse and was sitting on the ground, her head lolling against Sarvaduhka, who still knelt beside Izzy, begging him to think of something to save them. Johnny, his slimy Magellanic body glimmering on the sand, struggled to lift himself.
“I got a feeling,” Izzy said as baggies of moldering Danish, maps, sun tan lotion, airline tickets, ephemerides and sen-sens flew from his saddle bags. “I got this feeling, Ducky!”
I, Abu, had lived through many things. I had seen civilizations come and go. The Space People could scythe Izzy and the others into the dunes, and I need barely notice. But I, Mel, was so new to this world?twenty years of it?that every flutter was still a revelation. Oh, Izzy, come through!
“Ah!” Izzy thrust high a travel brochure he’d picked up at the American Embassy in Cairo. Then he riffled through it till he found the paragraph he’d been looking for, the one that hadn’t been there before Shaman’s epochй, the one he’d sensed via Izzovision. “Look at this, Sarvaduhka.”
Sarvaduhka read as Izzy held the page open before him. “So what?”
“The motel business has really dulled your brains, Duke.” Izzy ran toward the Space People waving the brochure over his head. “Hey! Look at this. Hey! Did Shameface show you this?”
The Space People were leaning to see Shaman through the glass doors above. Izzy had to swing them around, one by one, bodily, to make them look at his paragraph. When they did, some gasped and seemed immediately stricken, others became angry and denied it, pushing him away, while still others started to argue with Izzy and with one another.
Above, Nora stirred. I ran to her. “Mother!”
“I’m you!” Shaman protested. I ignored him.
“I am but a remote descendent of your creature Chephren,” Nora told me. Her face was coloring again, the eyes filling with light.
“No.” I kissed her forehead. “You are the Queen of the Pontius, the land of incense ladders, my beloved consort. I never made Chephren. I have nothing to do with Chephren.”
Shaman boiled. “Chephren came to me in a dream. He told me to dig you out, you ridiculous ingrate. Are you disowning Chephren?”
“It was your own epochй that changed things, Shaman,” I said.
Down below, Izzy was trumpeting it for everyone’s ears: “See, it says so right here, folks:
‘Visitors to the Valley of Kings may be interested to note that, contrary to previously held theories, there is no relation between the Sphinx and Chephren. Frank Domingo, a senior forensic officer of the New York City Police Department, has concluded, after rigorous examination and analysis, that there is no actual similarity between the face of the Giza Sphinx and the face on the statue of Chephren previously supposed to be its model.’