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Lila jumped down beside him and twined herself around his arm. "You lovely one-brow, you are a crazy man everywhere, just like in bed. How will you get the Great Sphinx through customs?"
My father clapped a husky arm around Sarvaduhka. Sarvaduhka was cadaverous and grim on the outside. Inside, he was set to explode. "He gets everything,"?I could hear him thinking? "female action included, and my squareback thrown in, free mileage, everything. And what do I get? Saddle sore."
"It so happens," Izzy crowed, "that if we can take him through during the hour just after sunset, the customs official lets it right by. He just thinks maybe something’s kind of fu
"Why do you have to move him at all," said Sarvaduhka, and he thought, "… you stupid, back-stabbing fornicator?"
"I’ll ignore the last part, Marmaduke, but the fact is, I gotta take him into the shop. I can’t finish fixing him against Shaman out here in the Sahara. My skin’s too pale, okay?"
"I will not bother to ask how you expect to move a sixty-five-foot-high limestone statue across the desert, through customs, and up the gangplank onto an airplane, and convince everyone that he is simply a mid-level executive at Coca-Cola. Two hundred forty feet long, Izzy!"
"Good work," said Izzy, "you’ve been listening to the Son et Lumiere. I get his peanuts and that on the airplane, don’t forget. I called it at the Cairo Khan Suites."
They were gathering under my chin, where my plaited stone beard used to hang, the Pharaonic sign that shaded Tuthmosis when he dug me out of the sand. My father, Joh
"Don’t call me that," Izzy hissed, "not in front of him."
"Okay, Joh
The Haymaker produced a ukulele and started strumming backup, while Joh
Joh
Sarvaduhka was unimpressed. "What about the plane? It won’t hold him."
"Anything that touches old Abu, once I’ve peripherized him, is go
"Do it, cowboy," Izzy said, sweating under his pith helmet as the sun crossed over the zenith.
Joh
came across the desert like a swarm of locusts. They were swinging "spirit catchers" over their heads, dowel-and-rubber-band doohickeys furiously buzzing.
We had left the Sphinx enclosure. Dad had given me sunglasses and a white polyester suit to wear. Izzy stuck a briefcase in my paw and hoped that the headdress would pass for a touristy gewgaw. For reasons unknown, the headdress, unlike my gigantic size, earthen complexion, missing appendages, and leonine corpus, could not be easily camouflaged. I walked in the middle, flanked by Joh
Dad and the baritone Haymaker had been singing:
And there they swarmed, Shaman’s Space People, a dozen humans swathed in what looked like twisted bedsheets. They swept straight for us over the sand. Dad and the Haymaker fell silent. Izzy started beeping.
"No!" Izzy pulled out the beeper and examined it. "Three point five and rising. Damn! Shaman’s trying an epoche." The air shimmered with heat waves. The Space People advanced through a mirage of shining sand that looked like the Great Salt Lake. As we continued to advance, it cleared, and behind them, suddenly, nearer than the chotchke market of Nazlet El-Semman, there appeared a large concession complex that had not been there a moment before, although everyone in the world except Izzy, Joh
The Texas state flag hung limply from a huge pole beside it. In addition to the entrance at the base, there was another entry on the upper story, a pair of glass doors opening into empty space. It looked exactly like a highway rest stop cafe, with the overhead passenger walkway amputated.
"Lila," Izzy asked her, "how’s the Vietnam War going?"
"The what?"
"The Vietnam War. This is important."
"Well, Iz, last I heard anyway, the VC were still holding onto Manhattan, Washington, and most of the American east coast, but the government in Memphis is making them fight like hell to advance inland. Why?"
"And who’s president? C’mon, Lila, honey, I gotta know the score before Shaman leaves the dishwasher."
"What president?" Sarvaduhka interjected. "The last president was Ke
"Well, boys," Izzy said, "better switch to Plan B. Looks like we’re not go
"Dang!" Joh
"Phooey!" Sarvaduhka spat and tramped forward, biliously abreast of Izzy. "It was stupid to bring a horse to carry that asp in the first place."
The Space People huddled about two hundred yards away. Someone had appeared against the double doors of the cafe. "That’s Gypsy or I’m a mute coyoot," Joh
Where’s Nora? I thought?I Mel?eyes closed, swooning at the cafe table. Is she okay?
"Sure she’s okay," Izzy said, down on the desert. "She’s batting a thousand, kid, only we may not be doing so good. I don’t like the way Shaman’s smiling."
Joh