The Mummy MEGAPACK®. Lafcadio Hearn
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SYMPATHY FOR MUMMIES, by John Gregory Betancourt
I brushed dust from my eyes, then zippered the tent’s flap shut. The wind was coming up again, sighing through our camp. It was a sound I had grown used to over the last two months.
“Everything locked up?” asked Linda, my wife.
“Yep,” I said. As director of the excavation, I had to make sure everything was put away before I turned in. Stretching sore muscles, I peeled off my dust-and-sweat-impregnated shirt, then washed up in a basin. “We’re getting close,” I said.
We were excavating the tomb of Atenkham, a court official in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. Tomorrow we would reach his burial chamber. There was little chance of riches; Atenkham hadn’t been a king. But artifacts were gold, metaphorically, to archaeologists.
“Still not worried about the curse?” Linda asked.
“What Egyptian tomb doesn’t carry a curse?” I asked with a laugh. I toweled off, then leaned over and planted a kiss on her full red lips. “Besides, curses only apply to big rich tombs when the moon is full and you haven’t said your prayers by night.”
“Mmm.”
“So I get my movies mixed up.” I crawled into my sleeping bag, exhausted. It was nearly midnight. I’d be up in five hours.
“Besides,” I muttered, “what kind of curse could a bureaucrat muster?”
* * * *
At dawn the next morning, I was ready for work. Although this was my seventh tomb, I still felt a mounting sense of excitement.
I had dreamed of Atenkham’s mummy. I saw priests removing his organs and preserving them in jars. I saw them filling his veins with embalming fluids and carefully wrapping his body in layers of white cotton swathing. But mostly I had seen papyrus scrolls, thousands of them, the life’s work of this ancient Egyptian bureaucrat. Those scrolls were the sort of treasure I sought.
Now I would see what truth lay in my dream.
My grad students were sitting our breakfast table with someone. I sighed when I recognized Mr. Abdul from the Department of Antiquity. He was in charge of excavation permits.
“Mr. Abdul,” I said to him, “what brings you here?”
“Paperwork, Mr. Jones,” he said in his succinct British accent. He passed me a sheaf of papers.
“What’s this?”
“New regulations go into effect this morning,” he said. “First of the month. I told you last week, as you may recall.”
“Yes, yes,” I said. He had mentioned something of the sort.
“If you would fill it out, please.”
I stared at the forms. None were in English, of course.
“This will take me hours,” I said. I glanced over at the tomb. We were so close —
“Paperwork,” he said, “must be done properly. I shall leave you to it.” He crossed to his Jeep, got in, and drove off in a cloud of dust.
“Shall we start anyway, professor?” Neal Jameson asked me. He was a young, eager, promising grad student.
“No,” I said, imaginary bandages tightening around my chest and throat. “Mr. Abdul doesn’t like me. If we begin without the paperwork, we’ll be shut down.”
“He can’t —”
“He can,” I said.
* * * *
My Arabic was lousy, and making sense of the application was a dense process, even with an interpreter. This, I thought at one point, is the