“Not thousands of years, folks,” she claimed with a relieved chuckle. “More like close to 180.”
“Talk sense,” Jak snapped.
“Remember when I said this area had been popular with filmmakers?” She gestured to the city walls. “The holy city of Aten is a movie set, built by Cecil B. DeMille back in the 1920s for the first, silent version of The Ten Commandments.”
J.B. eyed her skeptically. “Come on, Millie. How could a movie set have survived for so long in such good shape, weathering the nukecaust and sky-dark?”
“I remember reading about this place,” Mildred replied. “Unlike later movie sets, which were made of plaster and papier-mache and plastic, old DeMille built this thing to last—out of concrete, plaster and limestone. When the filming was over, he figured it was cheaper to bury the whole shebang rather than dismantle it and cart it back to Hollywood. The site was lost for over sixty years. It was relocated back in the early 1990s with ground-penetration radar. Best as I remember it, plans were under way for a full excavation. Guess those plans were put on hold until Hell Eyes came along.”
“A movie set,” Ryan said slowly. “If it was buried, there’s no reason why it couldn’t have come through all the geological changes since skydark fairly intact. How did Hell Eyes know about it?”
Mildred shrugged. “The redoubt had an extensive database. The story about finding the site was fairly well-known, so he probably came across a reference to it while he was file-browsing.”
“Do we ride or walk from here?” Krysty asked.
Jak shook his head. “Expecting us anyhow. Make easy on selves. Ride.”
Doc shook his head in disbelief at the teenager’s placid audacity. “Whatever we choose as a conveyance—the horseless chariot or our feet—let us proceed with all due caution.”
Ryan hitched his gun belt and climbed back into the chariot. “Let’s travel in style. If Pharaoh is going to chop our heads off, he might as well do it before the real heat of the day begins.”
Once everyone was back in the vehicle, J.B. let it creep forward along the tree-lined road. Ryan kept consulting Krysty’s hair, but it hadn’t stirred, so she wasn’t detecting any immediate danger.
They rolled past the outlying buildings, then toward the four identical statues of seated men, sculptures Doc identified as replicas of far larger pieces in Egypt’s Abu Simbel Valley.
There were sentries on the walls, and though they watched their steady approach, none of them raised an alarm or hailed them with a challenge.
As they drew closer to the open gate, Doc fidgeted with the lion’s head of his swordstick and murmured, “Interesting how necessity forces mature human beings to do things against their better judgment.”
Mildred overheard him and cast a sidewise glance at Krysty. Under her breath, she muttered, “And maybe against their wills.”
With no fanfare and just as little notice, the chariot entered the city of Aten.
The marketplace wasn’t particularly busy so early in the morning. The merchants hawked fruit, vegetables, woven linens, pottery and wooden kitchen utensils. There were wines and spices and even hand-loomed rugs.
The merchants wore simple tunics, and their hair was cut and styled in a strange fashion, some of them sporting completely shaved pates except for a long braid and others with long, plaited hair. They were similar in their well-fed physiques and eyes that didn’t once look in the direction of the rolling chariot.
The women were all black haired, their eyes outlined by equally black mascara. They walked with sensuous, graceful strides, their diaphanous ankle-length robes slit to the thigh. Some wore few ornaments, and others were so weighted down with bracelets, rings and necklaces they seemed like ambulatory bangles.
Other people thronged the plaza, all lean and dark. In fact, everyone they saw had swarthy skin and jet black hair. In all of the marketplace there was no sound; no voices spoke, shouted or laughed. There was only a serene silence from the citizens of Aten, and that in itself was a bit frightening.
A fountain bubbled and sparkled in the center of the plaza, surrounded by stone decorated with hieroglyphics. Nearly naked children drank from it, and women filled earthenware jugs. Like everyone else, they ignored the six people as they rode past.