Channeling Cleopatra (15 page)

The road shuddered again, and a chasm opened
up a hundred yards or so from his front tire. Now was the time to
see if the Sopwith could fly.

Reflexes taking over, he slid to the rear of
the seat, shifting his weight to the back wheel. At the same time
he jerked the bars up and gunned the motor.

Yep. It could. It flew across the mother of
all potholes as pretty as his Indian did after the races in
Portland, when the first biker to lay down the front wheel had to
buy the next round of beer.

Another turn toward the west through a crowd
of people running in every direction. Fellahin, Egyptian peasants.
A couple of the boys on his staff came from this district. They
were Egyptian salt-of-the-earth types who usually lived in housing
so poor it didn't take much to bring it crashing down around their
ears, the way it was doing now. Damn.

He kept wanting to turn back, to see what
was going on, to help people instead of protecting this damned
piece of some long-dead gal, no matter how famous she was. Was the
Kid okay? Would she have sense enough to get out of that flimsy
death trap? And how sturdy was Pete's dam, anyway? The only thing
that stopped him from turning back was Leda. She knew him, she knew
what he would be inclined to do, and she insisted that the tube was
the most important thing. Nothing for it but to get to the plane,
ferry the thing over to Rome, and fly back as soon as possible.
Shouldn't take all that long.

He slowed the bike and looked back across
the city in his rearview mirror. The spire on a mosque broke like a
pencil while he watched, its dome toppling to the street, soundless
in the greater roar of the catastrophe. The town was still rocking,
even after the worst of the shock passed.

Some of the taller office buildings, the
ones that were built along quake-proof recommendations, would be
okay, but even as he watched, others crumpled to pieces as if
Godzilla stomped them. The city's lights suddenly extinguished as
if Godzilla had blown them out after stomping the buildings.

Duke turned on the siren he had installed on
the Sopwith and roared through the mass of fleeing people. Suddenly
he was far from them and their houses and tearing along the Desert
Highway toward the city's most remote outskirts. He turned off the
siren and sped ahead. The quake didn't seem as bad out this way, he
was thinking.

Then came a huge, loud, wet, roaring sound
as if Godzilla had flushed his Godzilla-sized toilet. He wished he
could stop thinking of everything in terms of Godzilla. That was
the Kid's fault. Her and her collections.

But he knew what the sound was. The dam had
broken. He shook his head, as if to dislodge the idea of any
imaginary good he might have done if he'd stayed there.

Nucore should have sprung for that extra
layer of fortification, the one where they froze the floor of the
sea where the sheet metal pilings were driven in. He hoped the Kid
was okay. He couldn't help her now. He still had to take this metal
doohickey where it was wanted with what was left of Cleopatra. He
imagined the old girl as resembling her image in his favorite
schlocky version of the story, the one with Elizabeth Taylor back
in the days when she was a babe.

The road ran along beside the airfield for a
mile or two before the gate. The runway was eerily unlit except for
starlight. Why the hell hadn't the guy in the shed started setting
out flares, anyway? Emergency supplies would begin arriving from
Nucore before long. He could see the outlines of two planes, which
appeared undisturbed by the quakes. The runway didn't have any
obvious damage he could make out in the poor light, either.

He was at full throttle when he turned
toward the gate.

Suddenly, the headlamp on
his bike picked up a taxi-van. The vehicle was kitty-corner across
the gate, blocking it. The driver-side door was open, and the torso
of the driver hung down over the seat and half out the door.
What the hell had happened here?
he was wondering, when a familiar figure crossed
in front of the van and began limping toward the bike, waving her
arms.

"Duke!" he heard her cry. It was Gabriella
Faruk.

He skidded the bike in a semicircle to avoid
colliding with her or the cab, so that his front tire was headed
back the way he'd come. At which point he collided instead with the
nose of a jeep roaring up onto the road from the desert side.

To minimize the impact, Duke leaned to the
right and laid the bike down, smacking his helmet against the road
as he did.

He heard Gabriella yell something in Arabic
ladies weren't supposed to know how to say. The last thing he was
aware of was two or three guys grabbing at him and hauling him
toward the Jeep while all the time Gabriella, closer now, bawled
them out.

CHAPTER 13

"You didn't have to kill him," Gabriella
told her idiot cousin. "He could have been a lot of help to us, he
and Leda."

"He's not dead yet," Mo said. "Do you want
what's left of him?"

"Of course. Bring him with us. Has he got
the specimen?"

"Here it is," Mo said, reaching into Duke's
shirt and pulling out the little titanium cylinder.

"Excellent. Very well, then, into the plane,
quickly. The airfield will be crawling with rescue missions soon.
The rest of you, return to the villa and check on your mothers.
Send me a radio message at Ginia's. Coded, please."

Mo flew the plane while Gabriella played
paramedic to Leda's father. Duke's rasping breathing reassured her
that he still lived. She liked the crusty old devil, for although
he was in some ways all of the things she despised about men, he
was evidently not as bad as he appeared, having raised a daughter
as independent and capable as Leda. He was also funny, and that
went a long way with her, and he was genuinely brave, from what
Leda had told her.

Gabriella had never intended that he be
harmed, which was why she had set up the diversion herself. Damn
Mo's careless driving, but she supposed he was rattled, as they all
were, by the quake. He was a good pilot and the best hacker in
Egypt, but as a terrorist, he made a better computer
programmer.

The access she'd gained to the computer
during her visits to the beluga had enabled him to hack in and
monitor Leda's transmissions from his own machine back at the
villa. He had intercepted all but that last message, the crucial
one. It had been interrupted by the quake. But before that, they
received and decoded Leda's E-mail to Chimera saying that Duke was
bringing the specimen back to Nucore for Chimera, who would then
use it on the client who had claimed Cleopatra. It was not a very
subtle code. Leda had decided that most Egyptians wouldn't be able
to understand pig Latin, but in fact, it had amused Gabriella back
in her college days, and she was easily able to translate the
message.

By now, Gabriella knew the Hubbard family
well enough to know that if Leda's message said Duke would be
flying from the airstrip in the next hour with the specimen, that
was exactly what would happen. A mere earthquake was unlikely to
stop either of them. But it did throw off the plans Gabriella had
formed to meet Duke and the specimen and possibly persuade him to
take her with him back to Kefalos.

At some point she could then have injected
him with a fast-acting sedative and relieved him of the sample.
Afterward, she had intended to leave him somewhere safe to sleep it
off. Even now, she hoped he could still be saved. After all,
nothing really incriminating had happened while he was conscious,
and if he lived and they could be persuaded, he and Leda could be
real assets to the movement.

Now movement of another kind entirely made
the city below her resemble Tokyo after her favorite movie monster
had made a recent appearance. Whole flattened districts and city
blocks were lit only by the fires in other areas.

As she flew out across the coast and over
the Mediterranean, she saw that the largest archaeological dig of
all time was now once more simply a harbor filled with water, the
debris of buildings far more modern than the Pharos Lighthouse
bobbing on its still-turbulent surface.

She owed Leda a lot for rescuing the
precious remains of the great queen before this happened. She
desperately hoped her friend had survived the collapse of the dam
and would become part of her plans for a new Egypt, influenced by
the wisdom and insight of its last, best, and truest pharaoh.

As they approached the airstrip at Mykonos,
she had Mo put in a call to Dr. Nessa Benoit, Ginia's personal
physician, and ask her to meet them. Nessa was loyal, and her
clinic on Mykonos was totally funded by Ginia.

Nessa wanted the patient to be brought to
the clinic, but Gabriella needed to avoid the possibility that Duke
would ask awkward questions in public when he woke up. So she flew
Nessa and Duke across in her little Glinda the Good Witch of the
North bubble of a helicopter, which was blessedly not pink.

She hadn't seen much of Ginia since
immediately after her blending.

When they met this time, it seemed to
Gabriella that although her own greeting was as warm and
enthusiastic as ever, Ginia's was somewhat reserved. She turned her
head, in fact, so that Gabriella's kiss landed on her cheek.
Gabriella supposed it was natural. Half of Ginia didn't actually
know Gabriella all that well since the blending.

They had discussed this sort of possibility
before Ginia underwent the procedure, but it didn't help. Gabriella
tried to ignore the sense of abandonment that swept over her with
the coolness of her best, and at times only, friend.

She tried instead to focus on anticipating
her own blending, but for a change, that didn't help. How much more
would it complicate her already interdependent relationship with
Ginia when each of them carried the memories and personalities of
another woman as well as her own? At least Cleopatra was known to
have had only two lovers. Pandora Blades supposedly had many, of
both sexes, to ease her pain over her long-standing passion for her
estranged husband, Theo.

Nessa and some of the servants were carrying
Duke into the house on a makeshift stretcher.

"How is he?" Ginia asked.

"Not doing very well. I think if I can
relieve the pressure on his brain from the skull fracture, however,
he may improve. Where may I use as a surgery?"

"Show Dr. Benoit and her patient to the
folding room in the laundry," Ginia instructed the servants. "There
is water, clean cloths. Do you require anything else?" she asked
Nessa.

"It will be an awkward surgery to perform
alone," the doctor replied.

"I'll assist," Gabriella said. "I have had
some practice opening people, after all, even if they have been
dead for thousands of years. Meanwhile, Madelaine can check this
and make sure it's ready for transfer." She pulled out the titanium
canister. Ginia took it from her and, without another word, headed
for her assistant's office. Her new assistant had been recruited
from the Nucore laboratory staff. She hadn't been hired to plan
parties and cancel charity luncheons but because of her knowledge
of the blending procedure. Gabriella, through Mo, had been
transmitting Leda's decoded messages to Madelaine for clarification
since Leda found the canopic jar.

Brain surgery on a living person was quite
different in some ways. For some reason, she had forgotten about
how much flowing blood was involved with the live ones. She didn't
consider herself squeamish, but the room, mainly the province of
servants, was not air-conditioned or even particularly well
ventilated. The smell of hot bone as the saw went through it was
nauseating, the spurt of bright blood that when mopped away
revealed old dark blood that had pooled, putting pressure on the
brain, left Gabriella feeling dizzy, as well as queasy.

It occurred to her that if she was going to
have to kill anyone, perhaps she should do it with a very
long-range firearm. Or better yet, drop bombs on them from a
high-altitude airplane. This was altogether too personal.

But then, so, too, had the death of her
mother been personal. How had he stood it, her stepfather, killing
someone with whom he had eaten and slept?

She felt better once Nessa had closed the
wound and they had mopped away the worst of the blood. The servants
finished cleaning Duke and wrapped him in fresh sheets before
taking him to the room Ginia had designated. It was between her
office and the room she and Gabriella usually shared.

As they passed the office, Madelaine came
out, wearing a puzzled expression.

"Whose donation is this supposed to be?" she
asked Gabriella, indicating the little tube.

"You know very well," Gabriella said,
suddenly exhausted from her exertions of the night.
"Cleopatra's."

Madelaine shook her head. "Impossible. This
is much too new and much too old, and the wrong sex besides.
Instead of being from a young woman of ancient times, this sample
belongs to an elderly man of present times. In fact, it might be a
very good match to that injured fellow next door."

Gabriella buried her face in her hands and
groaned. Of course it wouldn't be this easy. She should have known.
Leda and Duke were both very clever. They had tricked her.

A thorough search of Duke's clothing
revealed no other specimen, and it occurred to her that perhaps the
Cleopatra specimen had been on his bike rather than on his person.
She must get on the radio at once and tell the boys to return for
the bike. She couldn't blame them any more than she blamed herself,
of course. Having found the first specimen in his shirt, none of
them thought to look any further.

The original plan was to verify the
specimen, then, under the guise of delivering it to Chimera,
persuade, bribe, or force the scientist to blend the queen's DNA
with Gabriella instead of the client he had in mind. Madelaine only
knew about part of the scheme. There was no need for her to know
too much.