Another group of men used mallets to pulverize cactus lobes laid out on big squares of muslin, pounding them to pulp.
The entire operation was very organized, very efficient, like an assembly line.
The three outlanders were herded into a building on the far side of the compound. The room the guards guided them to contained furniture. It was simple, but much appreciated by Doc, who flopped down in a thickly upholstered chair with a sigh. A dark, polished table stood in the middle of the room, and beside the table stood a dark, polished man, though Ryan had to look hard at him to make certain he was a man.
“You may go, but remain outside,” he said to the guards. They obediently left the room. Smiling nervously all around, he announced in lilting tones, “My name is Iwat. I am to be your instructor in the customs of Aten. I serve as scribe and scholar in the court of Pharaoh. You will listen to me and you will learn.”
Ryan wasn’t sure if the man had a slight speech impediment or had just adopted an affected manner of speaking. As it was, he was almost too precious for words, too precious to stomach.
Iwat was a plushy man in his midtwenties, soft faced with limpid, liquid brown eyes. He wore a green-and-white ankle-length mantle cinched at the waist by a gold-tasseled cord. The toes poking out from beneath the hem of his mantle were painted a shocking pink. An opal the size of a robin’s egg hung from one fleshy earlobe. His short black hair was a mass of tight curls,
“Let’s get on with it, then,” J.B. said gruffly.
“We shall, when the other member of your party arrives.”
As if on cue, a scantily clad black woman stepped through the door. Everyone stared at her in non-plussed silence for a heartbeat, then J.B. rushed to her, exclaiming, “Mildred? Dark night! Mildred!”
J.B. and Mildred embraced and kissed passionately, then the Armorer held her at arm’s length and looked her up and down. “Where’d you get that rig?”
She laughed shortly. “Costume of the day.”
“My, Dr. Wyeth,” Doc said in a laconic drawl, “don’t you look as professional and as medical as can be. I’d let you freeze me anytime.”
“Look who’s talking, Dr. Tanner.” Though her voice was sharp, her mouth was smiling. “Past time for your diapers to be changed, isn’t it?”
Iwat waved beringed hands. “Please, people, please. We must begin so you can be assigned to your individual duties.”
“What do you mean by that?” Ryan asked darkly.
Iwat pursed his lips in disapproval. “Listen and learn.”
He began to speak, telling them that, among other things, Akhnaton had been reborn into the world, to be the pharaoh of the world. “I only tell you what mystics knew ages ago—that the savior of humanity was coming, Akhnaton, to whom all the peoples of the world will one day bow their necks.”
Akhnaton’s powers derived from Osiris, Iwat said, and with the god’s help, he was building an empire, a dynasty that would last ten thousand years and all who took part in forging it would share in the benefits.
Iwat’s eyes glowed with a fanatical fervor as he spoke of Akhnaton, and he spoke sincerely of his worship of the god-king. His pride in Aten was evident in his tedious descriptions of all it had to offer and the glories it would offer in the future.
“It will be once again as it was in the before-times. Our people will spread out from Aten, bringing the word of Akhnaton into the wastelands. We will reshape this world and make certain that the evil that sprouted in it never grows again. Pharaoh will unite all the different peoples and tribes. All will join us, and the old divisions of race, nationalism and sexual preference that nearly destroyed the world will be forgotten.”
Mildred, Doc, J.B. and Ryan had restrained themselves from commenting during the long dissertation, but now they had heard enough.
“Hell Eyes is going to conquer the world with the force of his personality?” Ryan asked sarcastically.
Iwat blinked at him in shock. “Do not use that term. It is forbidden and carries with it ghastly penalties.”