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to be the one I knew is uglier than a battlefield on the day after, more crowded, and smells
worse, too. My Cleopatra loves another. And despite all of this you begrudge me a glass of
wine to smooth the edges?"
'Marcus, read my mind if you can, okay? Your edges were already way too wine-smoothed.
The Cleopatra in Leda isn't our Cleopatra not the one who got me to blend with you
anyway. That's Gabriella, the contessa's niece. A very classy lady, and smart. She's younger
than Leda, too, and cute in a sassy kind of way. And I think she already likes me since she told
me about the treasure."
"No doubt that was Little Egypt's way of getting you to embody me."
"Little Egypt?"
'I call called call? Cleopatra by that name since although she is Egypt or was she
seems seemed too young, too fragile, and so very small for such a weight of
responsibility."
'So anyway, I think that er Little Egypt is still waiting for you inside Gabriella, so you
can't use losing your true love as an excuse to drown your sorrows. Face it, when you were
alive you were a damn drunk. That last battle you fought was a textbook example when I was
in the Navy of how not to fight a battle at sea. History remembers you as a loyal follower of
Julius Caesar, a rival of that nephew of his, Cleopatra's boyfriend, and pretty much a screw-
up otherwise."
"You read Plutarch, didn't you? He didn't like me. He was a friend of Cicero's, and that old
goat tormented me and plotted against me until the day I was able to have him killed.
Plutarch never forgave me. And, of course, he didn't like Cleopatra. She was a woman, and he
didn't think much of the sex. Of course, nobody knew her like I did."
"That's why you gave her a library but kept the rest of the loot for yourself?"
"It was gold. Egypt overflows with gold."
"Past tense, buddy. Up until now not even the river has been allowed to overflow."
"Of course it does, during the annual floods. Why else do you suppose they have the Nile-
ometer?"
Mike formed an image of himself shaking his head. "Nope. They built a dam or two that took
care of that."
"Who would do such a thing? Rome?"
"The Egyptian government and the Soviets from what I read."
"What are Soviets? Oh, I see. Gauls and Hun mixed. Terrible combination, that. But why
would they do such a thing? Even to Egyptians in our time, the Nile was as much a goddess as
a river."
'Damming provides power and makes irrigation easier. That was the theory anyway. Turns
out, the silt that's always made the valley so fertile gets dammed up, too, so now the Nile
Valley farmers have to use fertilizers where they never did before. So in a couple of days
they're letting the river out on a short leash enough of it for long enough to silt things up,
they're hoping."
Marcus wasn't really listening but seemed to be thinking fast, calculating, weighing possible
good against possible bad. "Where exactly are these dams anyway?"
"The first one's at Aswan; the High Dam is farther upstream."
'This does not bode well. I thought perhaps if the floods no longer came, it might make what
you seek easier to find. How much farther upstream is this second dam, and what effect does
it have?"
"Let me put it this way, buddy. It's drowned several ancient temples and monuments."
He suddenly found himself chuckling, then guffawing, drawing a breath, sniffing, then
giggling a little before it hit him again the image of piles of bars of gold with the Nile
waters rising high above them while crocodiles and hippos swam merrily around. At that
point he burst into such gales of mirth that he thought he would choke on it.
Under all that he demanded, "What's so damn funny?"
"You are, son. You are. You went to all that trouble to steal my spirit so you could steal my
treasure and never realized that, from what you tell me, it's been submerged beneath the great
river for lo these many years."
'Let's be clear about this. I didn't steal anything, man. I'm giving you a chance to live again,
in partnership with me. The gold would have made sure it was a comfortable partnership, the
kind I guess you would be used to when you weren't out in the field. Without it we will be back
in the field pretty soon, getting our butts kicked, if your past experience is any indication of
how you're going to affect my performance in battle. Where the hell is it anyway?"
"I have no idea now. I stuck it in a cave under my fort near the Isle of Philae. When we
abandoned the fort I forgot about it."
'Forgot about it?" Mike demanded. "How the hell could you forget about all that gold?"
"I was more concerned with saving our kingdom from my countrymen. Egypt is rich. I am
rich. It wasn't all that important at the time."
'Man, you really were drinking hard back then, weren't you?"
'I'm a soldier," Antony said. "Of course I drink hard. I would like to be drinking hard right
now."
"Sorry about that. I've been clean and sober for twenty years, and I'm not about to louse it up
because of you. In fact, maybe you were supposed to be blended with me so you could see
what you could accomplish if you weren't drunk all the time."
"What would you know about it? I was a soldier!" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]