Max Allan Collins

though, that the Akkadian and the sorceress couldn't slide down in, and he didn't even have to convince the woman, as they were both carried by its flow.

And when Memnon's red-turbaned guards slashed at the draining water with their swords, they were too late.

Mathayus and Cassandra were gone, sliding, ca­reening down a twisting drain, swept along with the tide.

                  Valley of the Dead

F

rom his high window in the tower room where he kept his primitive but visionary laboratory, Philos—that self-proclaimed man of science— gazed down at the source of the noise that had at­tracted his attention.

A phalanx of guards had gathered below, and one of them pointed up at the scientist's window, and then dispatched several of the well-armed, red-turbaned brutes, obviously on their way to come calling.

'Oh my,' Philos said to himself, blinking. 'I'm going to have to assume my tenure here is over....'

And he went to the carpetbag he kept snugged under a nearby wooden table and began to quickly pack, taking time to include a certain Chinese parch­ment. ...

Elsewhere, in the open-air marketplace of Gomorrah, outside a wine merchant's tent, the scrawny thief Arpid sat on a bench, drinking. He was not quite drunk, but neither was he entirely sober; how­ever, when the horns and trumpets of the palace guard began to blow their piercing alarm, the horse thief snapped to alertness.

Then Arpid sighed, thinking, Well. .. I warned the fool.

He rose and raised his glass to his fellow tavern-crawling reprobates and said, 'A toast—to my friend the Akkadian... let him rest in peace. Or pieces, as would seem more likely.'

The drunks and bandits and general lowlifes around him responded with a hoist of their goblets. This was a group that would drink to anyone, even a member of the Akkadian tribe, who all men knew (except this idiot proposing the toast) had long since vanished from the earth.

The wine of his toast had barely passed Arpid's lips when a cluster of red-turbaned guards came clat­tering through the bazaar, brandishing their weap­ ons. The thief shielded his face until the soldiers had rushed on; then he rose, bowed to his distinguished fellow scoundrels, saying, 'Alas, gentle friends, I must now take my leave....'

And he left.

On a nearby street, just over from the market­place, bedouin women were washing their clothes in a large, central fountain. Even when the soldiers of Memnon were on the march, a cry of alarm blaring through the city, life went on. The child of one of these women, tagging along with his mother, studied a tarnished coin that he'd found on the dusty street.

The hoy had never had a coin before, and didn't know what to do with it; but as he studied the foun­tain, he suddenly knew: a wish!

The boy tossed the coin, and—seemingly in cause-and-effect fashion—from beneath a floating linen garment, a beautiful naked woman burst from the water.

'Gods be praised!' the boy said, and for the rest of his life he would be a believer.

Cassandra leaned on the fountain, heaving for breath, as the wide-eyed boy took in the unclad de­lights of her lithe form. Then, from behind her, gasp­ing for breath, came the Akkadian.

The boy frowned and shook his head, disap­pointed by this additional apparition. Then his mother covered the child's eyes and hustled him away. A crowd began to congregate, but at the same time gave this magnificent materialized god and goddess breathing room.

They stood panting for a while—the pair had had quite a ride down that drain, flying out a hole in a wall, splash-landing inside a dank water chamber, finally finding their way up and through to air and sunlight—and now it was as if they were living stat­ues adorning the