She Walks in Shadows(40)
Victory! I had earned a second look. The old man shifted toward me in his chair. It was a thoughtless reflex to lift his glasses and put them back on.
He looked into my eyes, blue as the skies above Leng, and then he was mine.
“I was actually referring to your suggested re-classification for Pan jermynus.” I dropped my voice, pitching it to a conspiratorial murmur. “I’ve read your memorandum in favor of Homo jermynus. I quite approve.”
His pupils had expanded like pools of black ink. “But it was secret.” It was a weak protest, his voice boyishly high. “That report was only for the Secretary of the Archive ....”
“Secrets are hard to keep, Doctor Beatty.” I bared my teeth in a triumphant smile. “I’d like to go to the examination room, please.” I put my hand, still covered in a gray calfskin glove, on his arm. “I need to see her. Now.”
Within twenty minutes, Doctor Beatty and I stood in a brightly-lit basement room in the bowels of the Museum. In the center of the room, there were two dissection tables, one empty and the other with a hinged lid. The lid was closed, and held shut with a chain and a padlock.
“Unlock it,” I told him and pushed him, stumbling, ahead of me. I quickly turned and locked the door behind us, uncertain of who might otherwise come into the room. We had passed through several secured doors to reach this lab. Between Doctor Beatty’s identification and my own powers of persuasion, it was not terribly difficult. Nonetheless, I had been increasingly nervous as we walked along, forcing him to stop frequently to exchange lingering looks with me in the hall, as if we were young lovers.
By the time we reached the laboratory, my victim was flagging badly, his face gone from the rosy flush of pleasant arousal to a dark red flush of hypnotic ecstasy. His hands trembled and a light sweat had broken out over his face. He would go into shock soon, perhaps even die.
It took him nearly a full minute to fumble the key into the padlock and release the chain. By the time he was finished, I had begun to feel pity for him.
I walked up beside him, feeling an impulse of kindness. “Give me your handkerchief.”
He pulled the cotton square from his jacket pocket and gave it to me. I turned him toward me like a child, and gently dabbed his brow and cheeks. “I want you to sit down now, Louis.” I put a gloved hand to his cheek and sharpened my voice to issue a command. “You will sit down, close your eyes, and breathe deeply. Do you understand?”
He had already closed his eyes, turning his head to receive my caress like an affectionate pet. “Yes, Miss. I understand.”
I accompanied him to the desk in the corner of the room and settled him into the chair. He allowed me to fold his arms on the desk and lay his head across them like a tired schoolboy who has finished his exam. “So beautiful,” he murmured to himself quietly. “So beautiful.”
I turned away from him. The steel lid of the dissection table shone under the lights. Even from here, I could smell the funeral spices of her body: cassia and cinnamon, natron and myrrh.
I crossed the room and reached for both the handles, blinking back tears, and opened the double lid.
She lay on her left side, chin to her chest, knees bent in a fetal crouch. Her body had been desecrated, of course, for the sake of “Science.” The linen bandages were already cut away from her withered face, her right arm, and her right foot. In a specimen box, they had gathered her jewelry, and the amulets incorporated into her wrappings, to ward her in the Lands of the Dead.
Her arms were longer, her legs shorter, than those of a Human. Her hand was delicate, the thumb nearly the same length as the fingers. The robust bones of her face were beautiful and fierce: her powerful jaw, her withered lips pulled back over perfect ivory tusks. Her mane was well-preserved, still golden-blonde over her head, shoulders and neck. Normally, her eyes would have been closed with beeswax, but her Human consort had replaced the long-withered flesh orbs with two polished spheres of blue topaz.
I put my suitcase on the empty table beside her and opened it.
“Wait,” the old man said softly. He had risen from his bent position, but could not yet summon the will to rise to his feet. “What are you doing, Miss?”
“I am taking her.” I moved briskly, removing a white sheet from the case. I draped it over the mummy and quickly tucked her into the sheet. My strength was more than equal to the task: Centuries after her mummification, her remaining flesh and bones were light and crisp as autumn leaves. I winced as the old wrappings crumbled and flaked away at my touch ... but there was no time for delicacy.
“You ... you’re taking the Ape Princess?”
I whirled to face him. All of the anxiety I had been holding within me suddenly seemed to burst into rage and grief.
“She is not an APE!” I shrieked the words at him. He cringed away from me, whimpering submission, but I had lost control. I crossed the room again in a single inhuman bound, landing on the desk before him in a half-crouch.
“How DARE you call her an APE!” I lashed out with a fist, smashing a deep dent into the heavy metal file cabinet beside him. He urinated helplessly in the face of my fury, rank yellow liquid trickling into his shoes and pattering onto the lab floor.
The old man was making little feeble warding gestures of supplication. I caught his wrists in an angry grip and roared wordlessly into his face, the belling cry of a queen’s dominance.