“I wish a pair of proper pants was in there,” Doc said wistfully.
“We’ve got other things to worry about than pants,” Ryan retorted. “Has anybody heard anything from Nefron?”
“No, but I have not spoken to Dr. Wyeth yet. I shall be going to her workstation straightaway. I am sure she has heard something by now.”
Doc left the dormitory, the weight of the metal ankhs causing his loincloth to sag in an embarrassing place. He even jingled faintly when he walked.
No one called to him as he crossed the compound to the rear of the palace. Though it was full of people, striding purposefully to and fro, they were too caught up in the joy of being ruled by a god and goddess.
Doc understood that the pyramid had cast a truly entrancing spell over the population of Aten. The belief in Pharaoh’s crazy vision to become a god was palpable.
The kitchen was as busy as the rest of Aten, filled with the clack and clatter of pots and the odors of several feasts being prepared at once. Doc found Mildred in a side room, looking hot and harried as she peeled fruit. He wasted no time on preambles.. Handing her two of the ankhs, he said simply, “Let us hope they work.”
Mildred slid them inside her breast coverings. “They’ll work against Akhnaton, I’m pretty sure. I hope they’re as effective against Nefron.”
Doc stared in surprise. “You haven’t heard from her?”
“Not a word from her or her maid, Kela.”
“Still, she may be making the final preparations for our flight. No need to become paranoid at this late date that she is psychically influencing us.”
Mildred wiped perspiration from her forehead with the back of her hand. “She’s Pharaoh’s daughter. Even if he doesn’t claim her, it stands to reason she would have inherited some of his abilities.”
“She’s been helping us,” Doc retorted. “And regardless, she is our best shot of escaping.”
“So you think we should continue to rely on her?” Mildred asked.
“We do not have much choice,” Doc answered grimly.
She sighed, eyeing an apple. “I’ll try to get one of the amulets to Krysty as soon as possible.”
“Hopefully,” Doc commented dryly, “before she exchanges I do’s with Pharaoh.”
KRYSTY KNEW DIMLY something wasn’t right. Not wrong, exactly, just not right. She knew it wasn’t normal to be in a perpetual state between wakefulness and sleeping, but that was how she felt.
It was as if she wavered backward through time, as though she were irresistibly pulled toward eternity. She had flashes of images, of emotions. There was a scar-faced man. A child. Though she knew she loved them, she had difficulty remembering what they looked like. It all seemed so long ago, swept away by the ghostly currents of a river of memory.
Krysty tried to return her attention to her bath. It was her wedding day, and she wanted it to be perfect because her god wanted her to want it. The sunken bath was filled with steaming water and a mixture of scented oils. The mirror was fogged, and she sponged it dry and looked for a long moment at her face.
She wasn’t sure if it was the face of Krysty Wroth or Nefertiti the queen. Memories came and went in a panoramic kaleidoscope. The scar-faced, one-eyed man was always there, but each time she tried to focus on him, he blurred, melted, transmogrifying into the hard, bronzed lines of her husband-to-be, beckoning to her, aching for her, all of him poised, erect and ready.
Krysty slid into her bath and tried to relax in the soothing heat of the perfumed water, letting the warmth ooze through her muscles, letting her thoughts drift free.
Once more the image of her lover, her husband-to-be, floated through her mind. Waves of desire radiated from him, an insatiable hunger, not a lust for her, but an obsession to propagate, to spawn and spread his hell-eyed seed over the ravaged face of the earth.
She glimpsed fortress cities, duplicates of Aten, on every continent, the subdued populations bowing in homage to the dynasty of red-haired god-kings. And she felt hatred—not springing from her, but from the heart of her beloved, hating the humans his offspring held in fearful thrall, hating humankind, desperate to shackle them to live and die in the service of his dynasty, his empire.