The Anubis Gates

“We have nothing to discuss,” said Doyle coldly. He raised Ameen’s sword over his head one-handed, and sighted at a point on the taut rope.

“I can bring back Rebecca for you,” said the Master, quietly but distinctly.

Doyle exhaled sharply, as though he’d been punched in the stomach, and he stepped back and lowered the sword. “Wh—what did you say?”

Though his position must have been painful, the Master uncovered his teeth in a smile as he slowly rotated on the end of the rope. “I can save Rebecca—prevent her from dying. Through the time gaps which I caused to be opened and Darrow discovered. You can help. We’ll prevent them from getting on the motorcycle.”

The sword clattered onto the roof tiles and Doyle sank to his knees. His face was now level with the Master’s twenty feet away, and he stared in helpless fascination into the old man’s eyes, which seemed to shine with a terribly intense blackness.

“How… can you know about… Rebecca?” he gasped.

“Don’t you remember the ka we drew of you, son? The blood that fell into the tub? We grew a duplicate of you from it. It hasn’t been a great deal of use to us as far as getting any consistent and coherent information—it seems to be insane, which might or might not mean that you tend that way—but we have happened to learn, a bit at a time, a lot about you.”

“This is a bluff,” said Doyle carefully. “You can’t change history. I’ve seen that that’s true. And Rebecca… died.”

“A ka of her died. It wasn’t the real Rebecca that fell off your motorcycle. We’ll go into the future and get some of her blood, grow a ka, and then switch them at some point, let the ka go die as you remember, and then the real Rebecca can come back here with you and,” the Master smiled again, “change her name to Elizabeth Jacqueline Tichy.”

Ashbless slowly and wonderingly shook his head. I really think I’m going to do it, he thought. I believe I’ll actually reel him in and save him. My God, I thought he was only going to offer me money. “But there’s already an Elizabeth Tichy—somewhere.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Doyle took hold of the rope. Sorry, Tewfik, he thought. Sorry, Byron. Sorry, Miss Tichy. Sorry, Ashbless, but it looks like you live out the rest of your life as a slave of this creature. And sorry, Becca—God knows this isn’t any way you’d have chosen it.

With a good deal more ease than the doorkeeper, Ashbless drew in a yard of the rope. As he tried to knot it with one hand, he glanced once more at the Master’s face, and the smile on it was not only triumphant, contemptuous and smug, but imbecilic too.

That glimpse of idiocy in the supposedly all-knowing Master was like cold water on a fevered forehead. Jesus, Doyle thought, was I really going to buy Rebecca back with the death of the Tichy girl, whom I’ve never even met? “No,” he said conversationally. He let go of the rope and it snapped back out with a twang and an evidently agonizing jerk against the Master’s shoulders.

“You’ll be saving Rebecca’s life, Doyle,” croaked the wincing Master. “And your own sanity—you’re going mad, you know that—and the facilities for the insane aren’t very nice here, remember.”

Ashbless turned away, snatched up the sword and as he and the Master both screamed he swung it in a hard overhead wood-chopping stroke that not only snapped the taut rope but shattered the blade and a roof tile.

Still screaming, the Master receded rapidly away, as though he were lying in the bed of an invisible truck that was trying to beat the zero-to-sixty record. Then he was out past the roof edge and picking up more speed, skimming away twenty feet or so above the ground. He was silhouetted against the moon, so Ashbless could see him clearly even in the deepening dusk.

“Enjoy it in the stinking madhouse, Doyle!” roared a voice from the pit below Ashbless’ feet. “Eating excrement and being buggered by the guards, that’s what’s in store for you, boy! It’s true, Romanelli jumped ahead and looked! And listen, we already rescued Rebecca, Romanelli’s got her, but now that she’s no good for barter I’ll tell you what she can look forward to… “

As the voice raved on, Ashbless realized that it was the Master speaking through the one wax man that still had a head. The Master himself was just a dot on the face of the moon now, slowly shrinking. After a minute or two the voice from the pit, which was still dilating upon the defilements in store for Rebecca, and how much she’d eventually come to relish them, abruptly choked and ceased. Either the wax speaking apparatus had broken down or the Master was out of range.