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CHAPTER
FOUR

Marty stood facing an ochre-colored stone wall. His eyes stung and watered. Bricks? Had he turned himself around so that he was now facing into a corner of the tunnel, seeing exposed brick?

But his eyes watered because the light cascading all around him was brilliant daylight, and overhead stretched a piercingly blue sky.

What had happened?

His hand hurt, and he dropped the ankh, which only now did he realize was actually in his possession. It landed on soft stone beneath his feet with a dull thud.

“What happened?” François’s voice sounded remote.

“Look at that!” Gunther snapped. Then, in a more worried tone, “Step back. Be careful. Marty, watch where you put your feet.”

Marty turned slowly. He saw the others all standing on a shelf of yellowish stone. They all wore the same clothing they had been wearing in the tunnel, and each held an ankh. Most of them stared past him, though Lowanna had her head cocked to one side as if listening to something, and Surjan stared at the ankh in his hands. It was the size of a large knife, or a short sword.

Marty left the ankh on the ground for the moment. He felt a tingling sensation from head to toe, as if he’d been shocked. He breathed heavily. Heeding Gunther’s advice to tread carefully, he turned around.

The stone at his feet fell away in a hundred-foot drop. At the bottom, the descent ended abruptly on a steep sandy slope, covered with tall green grass that rolled down another fifty feet onto a green prairie. Miles away, he saw ranks of low hills cutting across the savannah, the whole landscape fading into blue in the distance.

Marty controlled his reaction, stepped away from the cliff’s edge, and picked up the ankh carefully. The skin of his palms was tender.

“Everyone else get burned hands from this thing?” he asked.

A hesitant, muttered yes rolled around the group.

“I dropped acid once,” François said. “Okay, a few times. But the trips were always more interesting than this. That sky, for instance, is just blue. Also, I don’t remember taking anything today. Maybe that chamber contained some type of hallucinogenic.”

“This is a dream,” Lowanna said. “I’m clearly dreaming.”

Marty had to concur. Obviously, he had fallen and hit his head, and was suffering oxygen deprivation down in the tunnel, or he’d accidentally been drugged from the ancient dust.

François edged forward toward the cliff. “Since it’s a dream, maybe I should try to fly.”

Surjan knelt and pressed the long stem of his ankh to a large stone at his feet. “I’m not so frivolous with my life. Even a dream-life.”

“We should get away from this cliff.” Marty smiled. “Since I’m the dreamer and you’re all dream-figments, you don’t really get a vote.”

François frowned. “I get a vote. I always get a vote.”

“Because of your money?” Lowanna asked.

“That’s not what I was saying,” François said. “But it’s not crazy to remember that I’m paying for all the vehicles, and the tents, and the tools, and the food.”

“Yes,” Lowanna said. “And where is that stuff?”

“That’s a really good point,” Gunther said. “Where is that stuff? In particular, where is the water?”

Marty realized that he was sweating in the heat. The sweeping vista before him didn’t show any sign of a river.

“This . . . this is a dream, or a hallucination.” François cleared his throat.

“Right. So, you were saying about your vote?” Lowanna scanned the rock formation they were on and started walking away. “I think I see a path down.”

François grumbled wordlessly but followed. The others filed in a line after the anthropologist and Marty came last, following the two Egyptian men. Abdullah had his arm around Kareem, and was murmuring reassuring sounds to the younger man. Kareem trembled, and twice Abdullah had to pull him away from the edge. The boy seemed to be in danger of shaking himself right over the cliff.

Marty, on the other hand, had never felt more sure-footed. Maybe this was the effect of being in his own dream, but his steps were smooth and perfect. Walking down the stone felt something like performing a fighting form, taking the fluid, smooth steps he had practiced thousands of times, in empty airport terminals, standing backstage to give presentations on new text translations, and waiting for the bus.

The rock formation on which they stood was familiar to him. Had he been here before? Was it a famous mountain?

But that was silly. The mountain was familiar because this was Marty’s dream.

Though, for a dream, the experience felt awfully crisp.

“This hill has been occupied,” Surjan said.

Lowanna stopped and turned, and François took the opportunity to keep going, getting slightly out ahead of her. Surjan looked at a low, time-gnawed line of stones, obviously the remains of an old wall. The ruin of a stone building lay at their feet, clinging to the side of the yellow cliff, overlooking a ravine. Marty looked down; the ravine led from the prairie below up onto the rock massif.

“You’re thinking what I’m thinking,” Gunther said to him. “This could have been a guard hut. Good control over the access up the arroyo.”

“Or a shepherd’s hut,” Marty said. “In a strong position to control the flock coming up and going down the sole approach.”

“We’ll publish rival papers,” Gunther said.

Marty shook his head.

“What will you say about that in your papers?” Surjan pointed at a vertical slab of stone a few paces from the ruin. Red images covered the yellow space. There were humans, some ten of them, and they seemed to be prostrate. Dead? Bowed to the ground on their faces, as so many ancient cultures bowed? And they faced toward three larger humanoids, with something like a hound at their side. The larger humanoids had heads like dogs’, and one of them was raising a mace in his hand.

“Anubis?” he murmured. “But holding a mace of kingship?”

“The ears are square,” Gunther said. “That’s Seth. And that pseudocanine thing, also with square ears and the forked tail, is the Seth beast. The sha.”

“Of course.” Marty nodded.

“Although I don’t know why there are three Seths,” Gunther said. “That seems wrong.”

“Oh jammy, even in my dreams, I get to hear this stuff.” Surjan shook his head. “I need a new job.”

The Egyptians pushed forward to the front of the line and Abdullah addressed François. “Let us go first. We can’t read the hieroglyphs, but we can pick a good trail. We’re used to the desert.”

“They’re not hieroglyphs,” Gunther objected. “They’re just pictures.”

“It’s the Jebel Mudawwar,” Marty said.

Gunther squinted at the rock pictures. “What?”

Everyone else turned to stare at Marty.

“No,” Marty said, swinging his arm to capture the vista behind him. “This massif we’re standing on. I recognize it. I’ve been here before. This is the Jebel Mudawwar. It’s a rock formation . . .” His voice trailed off. “In Morocco.”

“Why not?” François shrugged. “It’s my dream, we might as well be in Morocco. I’ve had some good times in Marrakesh. Lead on, Abdullah.”

Abdullah reached the end of the rock shelf and started to pick his way down a boulder-strewn slope into the ravine that descended toward the prairie.

“Only it’s way too green.” Marty found himself talking to Gunther, Lowanna, and Surjan, all of whom had thoughtful expressions.

“This is definitely spring,” Lowanna said. “Look at the vegetation. We’re in a savannah, and look how green the grass is. We’re in the time of the spring rains, or maybe just at the end of them.”

“Morocco is not a savannah,” Marty said. “Not in the twenty-first century.”

“We’re not in Morocco, anyway,” Lowanna said. “We’re in Egypt. So this is my dream.”

My dream,” Gunther said.

Surjan shook his head and followed the Egyptians and François down into the ravine.

“We’re going to need water, though,” Gunther said. “Or we’ll be dead by tomorrow. Dream-dead, if you must.”

“I’m thirsty,” Marty admitted, “dream or not. Other than the greenness of the grass, though, I haven’t seen any sign of water.”

The ravine took them down into a wider canyon, within the embrace of the U-shaped rock massif. The grass here grew thick and tall. As they hiked, Marty felt an irrepressible urge to let loose his inner teacher. He resisted for a brief time, but then decided that, since this was his dream, it didn’t matter.

“The rock formation is very difficult to climb on three sides,” he said, pointing. The others all stopped to listen. Lowanna plucked a long stem of grass and sucked at its pith as she examined the other plants around her. “It’s open to the west, so at some point in the past, I forget when, it was fortified. We’ll cross the ruined remains of the wall that blocks off the open end of the canyon in a few minutes, turning the whole thing into a natural castle.”

Lowanna yanked a plant from the ground. It wasn’t grass, but some sort of vegetable, with wide green leaves and a long, thick, white root.

“What is that, a wild potato?” Gunther asked.

“You said you were thirsty,” Lowanna reminded him. “And no, I think it’s more like a radish.”

“We’re all thirsty,” Surjan growled.

“First of all,” Lowanna said, “pluck a grass stem. Don’t pull it out of the ground, just pluck the top segment. See how it’s almost like it’s in a little sleeve? Pull it out of its sleeve and you expose the white pith.” She showed them. “That’s where the grass stores its water.”

“Not very much, though,” François grumbled.

“Not very much.” She nodded. “But also, it stores sugars there. The pith is sweet. Suck on it and you’ll start your own salivary glands. It will give you some relief.”

Marty plucked a stem and sucked on it. Gunther plucked one for himself and a second for Kareem.

“This won’t save us from dehydration,” François pointed out, gently tugging a stem from its sleeve.

“I have a theory about this wild radish.” Lowanna shook the dirt off the radish. With her knife, she carefully peeled away the outer skin of the radish. The inside of the root was moist and pulpy.

“Good idea,” François said. “We can smash that in a pot or something, and pour off the water.”

Surjan stepped a few feet away from the others to where a heavy boulder sat at the bottom of a slope of scree. He pressed the stem of his ankh against the stone and pushed it forward in long, firm strokes.

“We don’t have a pot,” Lowanna pointed out. “But we have thumbs.”

She had scraped the radish into a heap of pulp in her palms. Now she held the pulp over her head and wrapped her four fingers around it, pointing her thumb toward her open mouth. She squeezed, and the milky liquid extracted from the root ran down along her thumb and into her mouth. She squeezed out a couple of mouthfuls of water and then cast the remains of the radish aside.

“Do you have a radish for me?” François asked.

“Get your own,” she harrumphed.

François immediately began searching through the grass.

“Wait a few minutes,” Lowanna said. “Let’s make sure I don’t have an adverse reaction first. Mmm, tastes peppery.”

“Why did you test it on yourself first?” Marty asked. He didn’t know what the right answer to his question was. Who was she supposed to have tested the liquid on? Kareem, because he was a low-skilled laborer? Surjan, because he was responsible for physical security?

“I was going to invite François to try it first,” Lowanna said, “in case it was poisoned. But then I decided, hey, it’s my dream, and I’m thirsty.”

“That’s it, I’m done waiting.” François dug up a radish, his motions more awkward than Lowanna’s, so he left a bigger hole behind and had more dirt to shake off. He fumbled with the skin, too, nearly cutting himself, but with two minutes of sustained fiddling, he got the skin off, scraped off some pulp, and drank.

Marty was willing to wait. In case, somehow, this was not a dream and he was in fact in Morocco with a real life to lose. He turned to Surjan. “Are you sharpening that ankh?”

Surjan nodded and showed it to him. “I seem to have my belt knife, but the guns are all still in camp.” He seemed vaguely embarrassed about something.

“And your sword?” Marty guessed.

Surjan nodded. “So if any of these Moroccan castle people decide to try to rob us, I’d like to be a little better armed. And I think this can be made to serve as a kind of short sword.”

“It’s heavy enough to be a club just as it is,” Gunther pointed out.

“I want a sword,” Surjan said.

“There are lots of these radishes,” François said. “We’ll make our camp here. It’s probably worth exploring, but we’ll come back here for the night.”

Gunther eyed François and Lowanna. “Neither one of you feels dehydrated? Nauseated? Cramped?”

“I feel revitalized.” François thumped his chest.

Lowanna snorted. With her knife, she began cutting blades of grass, close to the earth. She gathered them up in the crook of her left arm as she went, quickly collected a thick sheaf.

“Camping here is problematic,” Marty said. “We’re under the direct sun, with no shade. We probably only have a few hours of light left today, but if we’re going to make a camp, it should be somewhere where we can shelter from the sun.”

Lowanna sat cross-legged, with her sheaf of grass beside her. Improbably, she began weaving the grass together.

“Are you making a canopy?” Gunther asked her. “For shade?”

“That might also be a good idea.” She seemed distracted, and shook her head as if clearing her thoughts. “But right now, I’m weaving a basket.”

“There’s no one here to give you merit badges,” François said.

“I will use these baskets,” Lowanna said, still speaking to Gunther, as if François hadn’t spoken, “to carry radishes. There are lots of radishes here, but there’s no guarantee once we leave here that we’ll find more of them, or even that we’ll be able to come back. I don’t have a waterskin, which would be a much more efficient way to carry the water, but at least I can carry radishes.” She pointed at her long-sleeved T-shirt, which read Tool. “It separates us from the beasts.”

“I’ll join you.” Gunther smiled. “If you can teach me how to weave.”

“You’ll get the hang of it quickly. Go cut yourself some grass.”

Abdullah and Kareem joined Gunther in gathering grass to weave baskets. Marty didn’t have a pocket knife, but found he could snap the grass off close to the ground with his thumb and forefinger, and began plucking strands.

“I don’t feel like I’m cut out for weaving.” François looked westward, out past the yellowish rock arms of the Jebel Mudawwar. “I’m going to go find that ruined wall. Maybe it will be able to give us some shade.”

“Good idea,” Marty said. “My memory is that it should be easy to find. It’s pretty big. But you shouldn’t go alone.”

“What are you worried about?” François asked. “Robbers? Snakes? Lions?”

“Any of those, I think,” Marty said.

“The only way to stop me from going alone is to come with me.” François strode away westward.

Marty handed Lowanna his strands of grass. “How do you feel about keeping watch here?” he asked Surjan.

“It’s a good idea,” Surjan said. “There could be robbers. Snakes. Lions.”

He kept a straight face, but was he making fun of Marty’s caution? Marty didn’t know whether Morocco had wild lions. This rock formation was clearly Jebel Mudawwar, but the fact that it was surrounded by a sea of grass threw Marty into a pool of deep uncertainty. Was Morocco less of a desert than Marty remembered? Maybe it had wild lions. And robbers.

It certainly had snakes.

The tingling in his limbs had subsided and thankfully, his fatigue wasn’t bothering him nearly as much as it normally did. He followed François, setting a fast pace because François had a head start.

“Listen,” he said as he caught up to the Frenchman. “Did you, uh, see anything? I mean, between the moment when you were in the tunnel and grabbed your ankh, and the moment when you arrived here, did you see anything else?”

François stopped. “You mean, did I have another dream before this one?”

“Maybe, I suppose that’s what I mean.”

“No, I went straight from Egypt to, apparently, Morocco.” François was staring at the ground. “Why? Did you have a vision?”

“Yes.” Marty shrugged. “But, you’re right, probably just another dream. Before this dream.”

François was staring at the ground. “Where are the ruins of that wall you were talking about? All I see are animal tracks. What makes tracks like this, a herd of antelope?”

Marty looked up at the massif. “Should be nearby, I think. It should definitely be visible. It’s twenty-five feet tall in some sections.”

Together they walked out farther onto the prairie, looking for the wall. They moved close to one cliff and then the other, looking for the tumbling stone ruins of the ancient fortifications that Marty remembered.

“Looks like you’re wrong,” François said. “We’re not in Morocco.”

“Maybe I’m wrong.” Marty looked up at the distinctive rock formation above them. “I’m pretty sure we’re not in Egypt, though.”


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