like what Spielberg had done to palaeontology with his park full of
dinosaurs.
In the end her voice had been over-ruled. Even Duraid had sided against
her. It had been the money, of course. The department was always short
of funds to conduct its less spectacular work. When it came to some
grandiose scheme like moving the entire Temple of Abu Simbel to a new
site above the flood waters of the Aswan High Dam, then the nations of
the world had poured in tens of millions of dollars. However, the
day-to'day operational expenses of the department attracted no such
support.
Their half share of the royalties from River God, for that was the
book's title, had financed almost a year of research and exploration,
but that was not enough to allay Royan's personal misgivings. The author
had taken too many liberties with the facts contained in the scrolls,
and had embroidered historical characters with personalities and foibles
for which there was not the least evidence. In particular she felt he
had portrayed Taita, the ancient scribe, as a braggart and a
vainglorious poseur. She resented that.
in fairness she was forced to concede that the author's brief had been
to make the facts as palatable and readable as possible to a wide lay
public, and she reluctantly agreed that he had succeeded in doing so.
However, all her scientific training revolted against such a
popularization of something so unique and wonderful.
But she sighed and put these thoughts out of her head.
The damage was done, and thinking about it only served to irritate her.
She turned her thoughts to more pressing problems. If she was to do the
lecture that the Prof had invited her to deliver, then she would need
her slides and these were still at her office in the museum. While she
was still working out the best way to get hold of them without fetching
them in Person, exhaustion overtook her and she fell asleep, still fully
clothed, on top of the bed.
the end the solution to her problem was simplicity itself. She merely
phoned the administration office and arranged for them to collect the
box of slides from her office and send it out to the airport in a taxi
with one of the secretaries.
When the secretary handed them over to her at the British Airways
check'in desk, he told her, 'The police were at the Museum when we
opened this morning. They wanted to speak to you, Doctor.'
Obviously they had traced the registration of the wrecked Renault. She
was pleased that she had her British Passport. If she had tried to leave
the country with her Egyptian papers she might have run into delays: the
police would probably have placed a restriction order on all passport
control points. As it was, she passed through the checkpoint with no
difficulty and, once she was in.the final departure lounge, she went to
the news-stand and studied the array of newspapers.
All the local newspapers carried the story of the bombing of her car,
and most of them had resurrected the story of Duraid's murder and linked
the two events. One of them hinted at fundamentalist religious
involvement. El Arab had a front-page photograph of herself and Duraid,
