Coptic Chivalry
“You are free as the air,” said he. “Fear nothing hereafter, for I will now remain with you.”
In the Bible, Eve offers the forbidden fruit to Adam. Eve herself was verbally seduced by the serpent, believed in Christianity to be Satan; later, Chapter 7 of Proverbs warns of the pitfalls of seduction. Sirens of Greek mythology lured sailors to their death by singing them to shipwreck; Cleopatra beguiled both Julius Caesar and Marc Antony, Dionysus was the Greek god of seduction and wine. Famous male seducers, their names synonymous with sexual allure, range from Genji to James Bond.
“You started out playing politics,” she said, “and it all comes back to the same old thing. Man and woman. Maybe that’s politics, because nations are based on the family. But we have proved one thing anyhow. Even in a civilization of only three people, each one has his moments of supremacy. And there must always be compromise, or bloodshed. If we stay, the compromise must be polyandry. I must accept both of you as mates. If we go, one of you must be compensated for losing me. Supposing one takes all the gold we can carry away, the other takes me?”
In translation, fidelity is the extent to which a translation accurately renders the meaning of the source text, without distortion. It is contrasted with transparency, which is the extent to which a translation appears to a native speaker of the target language to have originally been written in that language.
Its original meaning regarded duty in a broader sense than the related concept of fealty. Both derive from the Latin word fidelis, meaning “faithful or loyal.” In the City of London financial markets it has traditionally been used in the sense encompassed in the motto “My word is my bond.”
Infidelity is a violation of a couple’s emotional and/or sexual exclusivity that commonly results in feelings of anger, sexual jealousy, and rivalry. Infidelity can cause psychological damage, including feelings of rage and betrayal, low sexual and personal confidence, and even post-traumatic stress disorder. Differences in sexual infidelity as a function of gender have been commonly reported. It is more common for men compared to women to engage in extradyadic relationships. For example, one study found that some women in more financially independent and higher positions of power, were also more likely to be more unfaithful to their partners.
Instantly his men swarmed from the distant boat and sped over the sands toward him. The sheik Antar met them and the whole band turned toward the north, quickly disappearing among the rugged crags of the mountains.
It is the goodness of the years we have lived through, of the old time when we did this or that, when we dwelt here or there. Looking back, it seems a wonderful enough thing that I who am this, and she who is that, commencing so far away a life that, after such sufferings borne together and apart, ended so tranquilly there in a world so stable that she and I should have passed through so much, good chance and evil chance, sad hours and joyful, all lived down and swept away into the little heap of dust that is life. That, too, is Romance!
Antar, the sheik, waited for KÄ ra until his patience was exhausted; then he left the dahabeah and came up through the sands to Fedah to discover, if possible, what had delayed the prince from returning with his promised reward. To Antar this cluster of hovels seemed mean and unattractive when compared with his own village, and these hills were not likely places for treasure tombs. He knew that the French and Italian excavators had been all over them, and found only some crocodile mummy pits.
KÄ ra sat down on the ground beside me. “So you’re the most important one. You’re the king for a day. If we want to go back to civilization, you’re the only one who can take us.”
Next the sheik weighed in, “For suffering is the lot of man, but not inevitable failure or worthless despair which is without end, suffering, the mark of manhood, which bears within its pain a hope of felicity like a jewel set in iron….”
“Personally, I like life on easier terms,” I said. “Not that it isn’t pleasant here, but we have to work so hard. And we’ve been lucky not to have had any real sickness, except for the time Tadros ate a clam and that wasn’t serious. But sooner or later we’re going to need the science of medicine. And if we don’t need that, we’re going to have to have something else that civilization has and we haven’t. Furthermore, man is a gregarious animal. He may kid himself about how nice it would be to live on a desert island, but no matter how anti-social he is, he doesn’t feel right without others around him. Even if it’s only to be disagreeable with them.”
The sheik grew suddenly suspicious. KÄ ra’s promises were too extravagant to be genuine; doubtless he had deceived Antar from the first, and sought to obtain his services without payment. It was true that KÄ ra was reputed in Cairo to be wealthy, but he might easily have squandered his inheritance long ago. One thing Antar was certain of the Egyptian prince must produce his treasure at once or the sheik, thinking he was duped, would undertake to exact a bit of vengeance on his own account.
The whole world, the whole of life, with her return, had changed all around me; it enveloped me, it enfolded me so lightly as not to be felt, so suddenly as not to be believed in, so completely that that whole meeting was an embrace, so softly that at last it lapsed into a sense of rest that was like the fall of a beneficent and welcome death.
KÄ ra decided to break the news by easy stages. “Supposing we had a way to get off this planet. To go to the earth, or III Arcturus, or somewhere we could live like human beings again. Wouldn’t you want to go?”
Now Aneth gasped in horror. The accusation was at first beyond belief; but KÄ ra’s tone was positive and a sudden recollection of her grandfather’s doubtful life flashed over her and made her dread to question further.
Relational transgressions occur when people violate implicit or explicit relational rules. These transgressions include a wide variety of behaviors. The boundaries of relational transgressions are permeable. Betrayal for example, is often used as a synonym for a relational transgression. In some instances, betrayal can be defined as a rule violation that is traumatic to a relationship, and in other instances as destructive conflict or reference to infidelity.
It was not needful. The man continued calmly to enlighten her concerning McFarland’s crime and her grandfather’s participation in it, while the girl sat with wide-open eyes and a look of despair upon her white face.
Seduction, seen negatively, involves temptation and enticement, often sexual in nature, to lead someone astray into a behavioral choice they would not have made if they were not in a state of sexual arousal.
Seduction has multiple meanings. Platonically, it can mean “to persuade to disobedience or disloyalty”, or “to lead astray, usually by persuasion or false promises”.
Common forms of relational transgressions include the following: dating others, wanting to date others, having sex with others, deceiving one’s partner, flirting with someone else, kissing someone else, keeping secrets, becoming emotionally involved with someone else, and betraying the partner’s confidence.
I was in the court; the candles were still burning; all the faces, lit up or in the shadow, were bunched together in little groups; hands waved. The barrister whose face was like the devil’s under his wig held in his hands the paper that had been handed to Lord Stowell; my father was talking to him from the bench.
Aneth once showed us how to do most of the things and then left us to do them while she explored the ruins and dug up items that told how the vanished race lived.
“They were humanoid,” she told us once. “I found a frieze that pictured the inhabitants. While the art was primitive, it was easy to see that they were a great deal like men. Probably their civilization would compare favorably with that of Rome in Caesar’s time, although I haven’t found much bronze. Probably they had iron which had rusted away. I still haven’t found what killed them, but for that matter no one really knows what killed the dinosaur. It’s probably due to the fact that there’s a critical point in the development of any species, when that point is reached, the species dies.”
“But man went farther on earth than here,” I said.
There are differences between crimes of passion (which are generally impulsive and committed by and against both genders) and honor killings, as while crimes of passion may be seen as somewhat premeditated to a certain extent, honor killings are usually deliberate, well planned and premeditated acts when a person kills a female relative ostensibly to uphold his honor.
Out of the black shadows came shrieks of women and curses. I saw my young girl put her hands over her face and slip slowly, very slowly, from her chair, down out of sight. People were staggering in different directions. I had had more to say, but I forgot in my concern for the young girl.
“Okay, it’s a democracy. I’m not opposed to freedom of government, but there are a lot of things outside government that need changing. Back on earth, man is the dominant sex. On this planet, women will be.”
“But there are two men, only one woman,” KÄ ra said. He was breathing a little easier now and I judged he was recovering.
“All the more reason why women should be dominant,” said Aneth. “I’m more valuable.”
“We’re stronger. Women must have men to protect them.”
“Any time you want to test your theory that you’re stronger than I am, I’m willing,” said Aneth. And she looked perfectly able to take care of herself. I didn’t know then how long she had been on the planet, but she was hard as a rock. She’d taken care of herself in all kinds of weather, done everything a man could do in fighting against nature. Being a spaceman is no way to develop your biceps and neither is being a senator.
Chivalry and religion were mutually influenced during the period of the Crusades. The early Crusades helped to clarify the moral code of chivalry as it related to religion. As a result, Christian armies began to devote their efforts to sacred purposes. As time passed, clergy instituted religious vows which required knights to use their weapons chiefly for the protection of the weak and defenseless, especially women and orphans, and of churches.
In 4th century Egypt, Christians felt called to a more reclusive or eremitic form of living (in the spirit of the “Desert Theology” for the purpose of spiritual renewal and return to God). Saint Anthony the Great is cited by Athanasius as one of the early “Hermit monks”. Especially in the Middle East, eremitic monasticism continued to be common until the decline of Syriac Christianity in the late Middle Ages.
She obeyed silently, with a partial recovery of her self-control. Strange as the Egyptian’s words proved, they were, after all, more bearable than his endearing protestations would have been, and in her ignorance she welcomed any topic but love.
And I rammed all that into my story, the story I was telling to that young girl. I knew very well that I was carrying my audience with me; I knew how to do it, I had it in the blood. The old pale, faded, narrow-lidded father who was blinking and nodding at me had been one of the best raconteurs that ever was. I knew how. In the black shadows of the wall of the court I could feel the eyes upon me; I could see the parted lips of the young girl as she leaned further towards me. I knew it because, when one of the barristers below raised his voice, someone hissed from the shadows. And suddenly it came into my head, that even if I did save my life by talking about these things, it would be absolutely useless. I could never go back again; never be the boy again; never hear the true voice of the Ever Faithful Island. What did it matter even if I escaped; even if I could go back? The sea would be there, the sky, the silent dim hills, the listless surge; but I should never be there, I should be altered for good and all. I should never see the breathless dawn in the pond water of Havana harbour, never be there with Grandmother Hatatcha close beside me in the little drogher. All that remained was to see this fight through, and then have done with fighting. I remember the intense bitterness of that feeling and the oddity of it all; of the one that felt like that, of the other that was raving in front of a lot of open-eyed idiots, three old judges, and a young girl. And, in a queer way, the thoughts of the one who freely floated through into the words of the other, that seemed to be waving its hands in its final struggle, a little way in front of me.
“I’ll take care of that.” I picked up both weapons and hunted till I found what probably had been a well. I dropped them into it, albeit with misgivings. Still, a woman’s laughter is something that masculine pride would rather die than face. Women do laugh at men, but they do it politely, or where men can’t hear them. Maybe Aneth was laughing now.
A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church or the country, especially in a military capacity. The word knight, from Old English cniht (“boy” or “servant”), is a cognate of the German word Knecht (“servant, bondsman, vassal”). While the knight was essentially a title denoting a military office, the term could also be used for positions of higher nobility such as landholders. The higher nobles grant the vassals their portions of land (fiefs) in return for their loyalty, protection, and service.
Something in this expression struck him as incongruous. He thought deeply for a moment, a frown gathering upon his brow. Then he said: “I must not deceive myself with sophistries. What if the curse is already working, and because of it the English girl has turned my strength to weakness? But that cannot be. Whenever I have worn this ring I have mastered all difficulties and triumphed as I desired; and I will triumph in my undertaking to-night, in spite of the reproach I can already see in Anetha’s eyes. I am still the controller of my own destiny as well as the destinies of others; for if the talisman did so much for Ahtka-RÄ as he claims, it will surely prove stronger than any curse.”
Without the guns, though, we had a more difficult food problem. We would have to trap animals, or depend on fish, if fish existed in the stream that ran through the ruined city. And there were. I sharpened a couple of sticks with my knife and we tried spearing fish. We decided that it would take a lot of skill, and probably days of practice. We’d have to weave some nets, and this would take time too.
Claims of “crimes of passion” have been traditionally associated with the defenses of temporary insanity or provocation. A cuckold is the husband of an adulterous wife; the wife of an adulterous husband is a cuckquean. In biology, a cuckold is a male who unwittingly invests parental effort in juveniles who are not genetically his offspring. The word often implies that the husband is deceived; that he is unaware of his wife’s unfaithfulness and may not know until the arrival or growth of a child plainly not his (as with cuckoo birds). A related word, first appearing in 1520, is wittol, which substitutes wit (in the sense of knowing) for the first part of the word, referring to a man aware of and reconciled to his wife’s infidelity.
And directly, it seemed to me, I had stepped back three hundred years. I had never seen anything so old; this was the abandoned inheritance of an adventurous race, that seemed to have thrown all its might, all its vigor, and all its enthusiasm into one supreme effort of valor and greed. I had read the history of the Spanish Conquest; and, looking at these great walls of stone, I felt my heart moved by the same wonder, and by the same sadness. With what a fury of heroism and faith had this whole people flung itself upon the opulent mystery of the New World. Never had a nation clasped closer to its heart than its dream of greatness, of glory, and of romance. There had been a moment in its destiny, when it could believe that Heaven itself smiled upon its massacres. I walked slowly, awed by the solitude. They had conquered and were no more, and these wrought stones remained to testify gloomily to the death of their success. Heavy houses, immense walls, pointed arches of the doorways, cages of iron bars projecting balcony wise around each square window. And not a soul in sight, not a head looking out from these dwellings, these houses of men, these ancient abodes of hate, of base rivalries, of avarice, of ambitions, these old nests of love, these witnesses of a great romance now past and gone below the horizon. They seemed to return mournfully my wondering glances; they seemed to look at me and say, “What do you here? We have seen other men, heard other footsteps!” The peace of the cloister brooded over these aged blocks of masonry, stained with the green trails of mosses, infiltrated with shadows.
“I was hoping we’d have no subversion,” said KÄ ra, “but if there is, it will be dealt with promptly.” He turned to me. “Now I think we’d better go about checking our national resources.” He leaned over and picked up a handful of gold coins and stuffed them into his pocket. Then he helped himself to some diamonds, emeralds and rubies.
“My great ancestor was selfish,” he murmured, “and wished to prevent any of his descendants from becoming as famous as he himself was. Nevertheless, had I read the script before I removed the stone from the sarcophagus, I would have respected Ahtka-RÄ’s wish; but I did not know what treasure I had gained until afterward, when it was too late to restore the stone without another visit to the tomb. A curse is a dreadful thing, especially from one’s ancestor, and it is even to avoid Hatatcha’s curse that I am now fulfilling her vengeance. But Ahtka-RÄ may rest content; I have merely borrowed his talisman, and it shall be returned to him when I have obtained full satisfaction from my grandmother’s enemies. Meantime, the stone will protect me from evil fortune, and when it is restored the curse will be averted.”
Aneth turned on her heel and walked toward the door. When she reached it, she turned a moment: “When you get hungry, or need me, I’ll be around.” Then she was gone.
This summary dismissal was a severe disappointment to the dragoman, yet he had no alternative but to take his leave. Tadros must not expect too much from his innocent at first.
The cloud-like vapors resting on the desert muffled the short roar; we heard grim laughter, excited cries. He began to make a set speech, and his voice, haranguing with vehement inflections in the shining whiteness of a cloud, had an amazing and uncorporeal character; the quality of abstract surprise; of phenomenal emotion shouted into empty space. And for me it had, also, the fascination of a revealed depth.
KÄ ra, standing erect, looked down upon him with arms folded in repose and a countenance very thoughtful. Two reasons had stayed his vengeful hands. To murder Tadros would get him into trouble with the authorities, and so cause him great annoyance at this critical juncture, when liberty of action and freedom from espionage was important. In the second place, his half-formed plans included the use of the dragoman for his own advantage. Tadros was both clever and well known. He would become a good servant when he knew it would further his personal interest to be faithful, and so it was best that the dragoman should live for a time.
“Sorry,” said KÄ ra, “nominations are closed. Since there is no opposition, I’ll move and second that I’m elected unanimously. May I congratulate you on your wisdom, since I’m the only one of our group who has had political experience.”
“Hey,” I said, “aren’t you pushing this thing a little fast?”
“It is necessary to establish a civilized government quickly,” said KÄ ra. “And I assure you, I’ll be bi-partisan in my government. I’ll appoint you, Tadros, as secretary of state, and you, Aneth, as secretary of…hmm, let’s see. How about secretary of labor?”
“No,” said Aneth.
KÄ ra didn’t seem to be upset. “Well, we must expect opposition from the minority party. It’s your privilege to refuse the nomination.”
“Comes the revolution,” said Aneth.
To escape now seemed impossible. At least it seemed impossible while they talked. A dark spot in the shining expanse of fog swam into view. It shifted its place after I had first made it out, and then remained motionless, astern of the dinghy. It was the shadow of a big boat full of men, but when they were silent, I was not sure that I saw anything at all. I made no doubt, had they been aware of our nearness, there were amongst them eyes that could have detected us in the same elusive way. But how could they even dream of anything of the kind? They talked noisily, and there must have been a round dozen of them, at the least.
Aneth came from her mother’s hut in the cool of early morning, bearing on her head an earthen jar. She was bound for the river, to carry from thence their daily supply of water. As she passed Hatatcha’s dwelling she found KÄ ra standing in the archway, and he drew the girl toward him and kissed her lips. They were cold and unresponsive.
“How is your grandmother?” she asked, indifferently.
“She is with Isis,” he answered, holding her arm with one hand and feeling her brown cheek with the other. The girl shuddered and glanced askance at the arch.
“Let me go,” she said.
Instead, he folded an arm around her and kissed her again, while she put up a hand to steady the jar from falling. Then KÄ ra experienced a sudden surprise. His body spun around like a top and was hurled with force against the opposite wall. At the same time the jar toppled from Aneth’s head and was shattered on the ground. The girl staggered back and leaned against the stones of the arch, staring at the path ahead.
Her words affected me like the whisper of remorse. It was true. There were her wealth, her lands, her palaces; but her only refuge was that little boat. Her father’s long aloofness from life had created such an isolation round his closing years that his daughter had no one but me to turn to for protection against the plots of her own Intendente. And, at the thought of our desperate plight, of the suffering awaiting us in that small boat, with the possibility of a lingering death for an end, I wavered for a moment.
“You are cold, and selfish and cruel,” she resumed, her tone hardening, “and I have made you so. You are intelligent, and fearless, and strong. It is due to my training. Listen, then! Once I was young and beautiful and loving, and when I faced the world it fell at my feet in adoration. But one who claimed to be a man crushed all the joy and love from my heart, and left me desolate and broken. Like a spurned hind, I crept from the glare of palaces back to my mud hut, bearing my child in my arms, and here I mourned and suffered for years and found no comfort. Then the love that had destroyed my peace fell away, and in its place Set planted the seeds of vengeance. These I have cherished, and lo! a tree has sprouted and grown, of which you, my son, are the stalwart trunk. The fruit has been long maturing, but it is now ripe. Presently you, too, will face the world; but as a man and not like the weak woman I was, and you will accomplish my revenge. Is it not so, my KÄ ra?”
In the field of program evaluation, the term fidelity denotes how closely a set of procedures were implemented as they were supposed to have been. One defense mechanism that some researchers believe is effective at preventing infidelity is jealousy. Jealousy is an emotion that can elicit strong responses. Cases have been commonly documented where sexual jealousy was a direct cause of murders and morbid jealousy. Another defense mechanism for preventing infidelity is by social monitoring and acting on any violation of expectations. Unlike polygyny or polyandry, both men and women may have multiple partners within the confines of polyamory.
Polyamorous relationships are distinguished from extramarital affairs by the full disclosure and consent of all involved. Monasticism, or monkhood, is a religious way of life in which one renounces worldly pursuits to devote oneself fully to spiritual work. Forest dwelling was a common practice in early Buddhism, and it is still followed by some Buddhist sects such as the Thai Forest Tradition. The Christian monk embraces the monastic life as a vocation from God. His objective is to imitate the life of Christ as far as possible in preparation for attaining eternal life after death.
His tone was one of weary superiority, and I remained appalled by that truth, stripped of all chivalrous pretense. It was clear, in sparing that defenseless life, I had been guilty of cruelty for the sake of my conscience. There was Seraphina by my side; it was she who had to suffer. I had let her enemy go free, because he had happened to be near me, disarmed. Had I acted like an Englishman and a gentleman, or only like a fool satisfying his sentiment at other people’s expense?
The clearness of this vision was contained by a thick and fiery atmosphere, into which a soft white rush and swirl of fog fell like a sudden whirl of snow. It closed down and overwhelmed at once the tall flutter of the flames, the black figures, the purple gleams playing round my oar. The hot glare had struck my eyeballs once, and had melted away again into the old, fiery stain on the mended fabric of the fog. But the attitudes of the crouching men left no room for doubt that we had been seen.
In the fields of scientific modelling and simulation, fidelity refers to the degree to which a model or simulation reproduces the state and behavior of a real world object, feature or condition. He rose, and we passed out through the double lines of the servants ranged from table to door. By the splash of the fountain, on a little round table between two chairs, stood a many-branched candlestick.
The strangeness and tremendousness of what was happening came over me very strongly whilst, in a large chamber with barred loopholes, I was throwing off the rags in which I had entered this house. The night had come already, and I was putting on some of Tadros’ clothes by the many flames of candles burning in a tall bronze candelabrum, whose three legs figured the paws of a lion. And never, since I had gone on the road to wait for the smugglers, and been choked by the Bow Street runners, had I remembered so well the house in which I was born. It was as if, till then, I had never felt the need to look back. But now, like something romantic and glamorous, there came before me Aneth’s sweet, dim face, my mother’s severe and resolute countenance. I had need of all her resoluteness now. And I remembered the figure of my father in the big chair by the ingle, powerless and lost in his search for rhymes. He might have understood the romance of my situation.
This one looked near solution. As I recovered from my initial shock of seeing a beautiful girl pointing a gun at me, I noticed the gun more than I did at first. There were unmistakable signs of rust, and a rusty gun is often more dangerous to the shooter than to the shootee. It was so rusty, in fact, that I doubted if it would fire.
So I simply stepped forward and grabbed it.
She seemed to have been waiting for this move. No sooner had I jerked the gun out of her hand, than she seized my wrists, turned, and pulled me over her shoulder in a snap mare. The next thing I knew, I had landed in a heap.
“Then pay close attention to my words,” she continued, “and store them carefully in your mind, that nothing shall be forgotten when it is needed to assist you. I will explain all things while I have the strength of the elixir, for when it leaves me my breath will go with it, and then your labors will begin.”
I sat and said nothing, and things fitted themselves together, little patches of information going in here and there like the pieces of a puzzle map.
KÄ ra turned to me. “Tadros, as chief of the police, it is your duty to disarm the woman. She is violating the law by possessing firearms.”
“We won’t harm you, Aneth,” I said. I could see her point of view, but on the other hand nobody likes to have a gun pointed at him.
“No,” said Aneth.
“Listen to reason,” I said. “There are two of us and only one of you. Sooner or later you’re going to have to sleep, while we can take turns sleeping. You can’t keep that gun pointed at us forever. So you might as well be a good sport.”
“Uh-uh,” said Aneth.
“My dear,” said KÄ ra, “you are an earthling, certainly your instincts must be for the democratic way of life. A gun speaks of tyranny.”
It wasn’t hard to figure she was an earthling. She spoke perfect English and a thirty-eight on a forty-five frame isn’t found on other planets, unless earthmen brought them there. While I was curious about her origin, I figured that at the moment there were more important problems to solve.
“Anubis calls me, my son, and I must join his kingdom. My years are not great, but they have worn out my body with love and hatreds and plans of vengeance. You are my successor, and the inheritor of my treasures and my revenge and hates. The time is come when you must repay my care and perform a mission for which I have trained you since childhood. Promise me that you will fulfil my every wish to the letter!”
At first I thought she was smiling, and then I saw that her lips were grim and tense. What made her look more formidable than anything was what she held in her hand. A large-size, old fashioned thirty-eight on a forty-five frame.
She wasn’t the ghost of a vanished race. She was real, from the top of her wavy, black hair, to the crude hand-made sandals on her feet. Her eyes were soft and brown, but they glinted like the flash of polished steel. Her figure was well proportioned and graceful in its curves, but there was no mistaking hardened muscles. Her clothing, which included shorts and a sack-like blouse, seemed to have been woven from grass fibers, and animal skins.
I was back in a small, bare cabin, roughly wainscotted and exceedingly filthy. There were the grease-marks from the backs of heads all along a bulkhead above a wooden bench; the rough table, on which my arms rested, was covered with layers of tallow spots. Bright light shone through a porthole. Two or three ill-assorted muskets slanted about round the foot of the mast a long old piece, of the time of Pizarro, all red velvet and silver’ chasing, on a swivelled stand, three English fowling-pieces, and a coachman’s blunderbuss. A man was rising from a mattress stretched on the floor; he placed a mandolin, decorated with red favors, on the greasy table. She was shockingly thin, and so tall that her head disturbed the candle-soot on the ceiling.
Men on the other hand, have less parental investment and so they are driven towards indiscriminate sexual activity with multiple partners as such activity increases the likelihood of their reproduction. Twenty men flung themselves upon her body. I made no movement. The end had come. I hadn’t the strength to shake off a fly, my heart was bursting my ribs. I lay on my back and managed to say, “Give me air.” I thought I should die.
When it was done, she carried the empty vase back to the crypt and replaced the loose stone. Then she returned to the bedside and sat down upon the bench. A bowl containing some bits of bread stood near. She stooped and caught a piece in her fingers, munching it between her strong teeth while she stared down upon Hatatcha’s motionless form.
It was quite dark in the room by this time, for twilights are short in Egypt. But the pupils of the man’s eyes expanded like those of a cat, and he could follow the slow rise and fall of the woman’s chest and knew she was again breathing easily.
Reflecting back on what just transpired, I seemed to have an exaggerated clearness of vision; I saw each brown dirty paw reach out to clutch some part of her. I was not angry any more; it wasn’t any good being angry, but I made a fight for it. There were dozens of them; they clutched my wrists, my elbows, and in between my wrists and my elbows, and my shoulders. One pair of arms was round her neck, another round her waist, and they kept on trying to catch her legs with ropes. We seemed to stagger all over the deck; I expect they got in each other’s way; they would have made a better job of it if they hadn’t been such a multitude. I must then have got a crack on the head, for everything grew dark; the night seemed to fall on us, as we fought.
Then she went to a part of the wall and removed a loose stone, displaying a secret cavity. From this she took a small vase, smooth and black, which had a stopper of dull metal. Carrying it to Hatatcha, she knelt down, removed the stopper and placed the neck of the vase to her lips. The delicate, talon-like fingers clutched the vessel eagerly and the woman drank, while KÄ ra followed the course of the liquid down her gullet by watching her skinny throat.
I had my hands full of coins, but as I heard the voice they slipped out of my fingers and fell to the stone floor with a clanking sound. I wheeled around and in the red sunlight that streamed through the broken roof, I saw a human figure. A woman.
In one corner, upon a bed of dried rushes, lay the form of an old woman, Hatatcha. Her single black cotton garment was open at the throat, displaying a wrinkled, shrunken bosom that rose and fell spasmodically, as if the hag breathed with great effort. Her eyes were closed and the scant, tousled locks of fine gray hair surrounding her face gave it a weird and witch-like expression. In spite of her age and the clime in which she ad lived, Hatatcha’s skin was almost as white as that of Europeans, its tint being so delicate as to be scarcely noticeable.
Sometime in the past, this planet had been inhabited. Then something happened. Epidemic, war, famine, drought or something we didn’t know about had wiped out the intelligent life to a man. This had happened so long ago that even the bones had turned to dust. But the shell of his cities remained.
The other huts, ranged beside and before this one, were far less imposing in construction; but all had the appearance of great antiquity, and those at the north and south edges of the huddle were unoccupied and more or less ruined and neglected. Tradition said that Fedah, in spite of its modern Arabic name, was as old as ancient Qes, and there was no reason to doubt the statement. Its location was admirable in summer, for the mountain shaded it during the long hot afternoons; but around it was nothing but sand and rock, and the desert stretched in front as far as the borders of Al-Kusiyeh.
I started out to explore the spot where our ship landed. A couple of miles away were some rolling hills, covered with trees. Since we had seen a number of small animals, I figured there would be game there, probably water too.
Up above, the hum of many people, still laughing, still talking, faded a little out of mind. I understood, horribly, how possible it would be to die within those few feet of them. Antar’s eyes were dusky yellow, the pupils a great deal inflated, the lines of his mouth very hard and drawn immensely tight. It seemed extraordinary that he should put so much emotion into such a very easy killing. I had my back against the bulkhead, it felt very hard against my shoulder-blades. I had no dread, only a sort of shrinking from the actual contact of the point, as one shrinks from being tickled. I opened my mouth. I was going to shriek a last, despairing call, to the light and laughter of meetings above when Tadros, still shaken, with one white hand pressed very hard upon his chest, started forward and gripped his hand round Antar’s steel.
The parental investment theory is used to explain evolutionary pressures that can account for sex differences in infidelity. This theory states that the sex that invests less in the offspring has more to gain from indiscriminate sexual behavior. This means that women, who typically invest more time and energy into raising their offspring (9 months of carrying offspring, breast feeding etc.), should be more choosy when it comes to mate selection and should therefore desire long-term, monogamous relationships that would ensure the viability of their offspring. Men on the other hand, have less parental investment and so they are driven towards indiscriminate sexual activity with multiple partners as such activity increases the likelihood of their reproduction.
“It is perfectly clear. Tadros,” said KÄ ra. “I have had experience in political matters, therefore I’m more suited to governing the planet. You follow my orders and do all the work, and I’ll do the planning and thinking.”
These might not have been his exact words, but that was what he said. I was mad enough to want to sock him right there. But I knew that we might get rescued someday and he could throw his weight around almost anywhere. The only time I had the authority to shove KÄ ra Littlebrook around was when he was a passenger on my spaceship, which he certainly wasn’t now.
“The first thing to do will be to find shelter, food and water,” he said.
“Don’t be silly,” I said, “we’ve got all those things on our spaceship.”
Queer-looking boats crawled between the shores like tiny water beetles. One headed out towards us, then another. I did not want them to reach us. It was as if I did not wish my solitude to be disturbed, and I was not pleased with the idea of going ashore. A great ship, floating high over the desert, black and girt with the two broad yellow streaks of her double tier of guns, glided out slowly from beyond a cluster of shipping in the bay. She passed without a hail, going out under her topsails with a flag at the fore. Her lofty spars overtopped our masts immensely, and I saw the men in her rigging looking down on our decks. The only sounds that came out of her were the piping of boatswain’s calls and the tramping of feet. Imagining her to be going home, I felt a great desire to be on board. Ultimately, as it turned out, I went home in that very ship, but then it was too late. I was another man by that time, with much queer knowledge and other desires. Whilst I was looking and longing I heard Tadros’ voice behind me asking one of our sailors what ship it was.
But all of his brilliance and all of my youthful innocence couldn’t have prevented our being spacewrecked on a lonely, uninhabited planet. We knew it was lonely and thought it was uninhabited, as it almost was. It was the second planet of an unimportant sun, Yuga 16, which lay unexpectedly in our path through hyperspace while I drove him to an important committee meeting on Arcturus III. As a result I had to dump our fuel to alter our mass in order to avoid a direct collision. And naturally there was nothing else to do but land on II Yuga 16. So we were marooned and even if our radio had been powerful enough to send out an S O S it would take years for our message to get anywhere.
The most substantial of the dwellings was that occupied by Hatatcha and her grandson. It had been built against a hollow or cave of the mountain, so that the cane roof projected only a few feet beyond the cliff. A rude attempt on the part of the builders to make the front wall symmetrical was indicated by the fact that the stones bore quarry marks, and at the entrance arch, which had never been supplied with a door, but was half concealed by a woven mat, the stones were fully four feet in thickness. KÄ ra considered the future.
“If my brother obtains any further valuable knowledge,” said he, finally, “he will wish to sell it to good advantage. And it is evident to both of us that old Hatatcha has visited some secret tomb, from whence she has taken the treasure that enabled her to astound London for a brief period. When her wealth was exhausted she was forced to return to her squalid surroundings, and by dint of strict economy has lived upon the few coins that remained to her until now. Knowing part of your grandmother’s story, it is easy to guess the remainder. The coins of Darius Hystaspes date about five hundred years before Christ, so that they would not account for Hatatcha’s ample knowledge of a period two thousand years earlier. But mark me, KÄra, the tomb from which your grandmother extracted such treasure must of necessity contain much else, not such things as the old woman could dispose of without suspicion, but records and relics which in my hands would be invaluable, and for which I would gladly pay you thousands of piasters. See what you can do to aid me to bring about this desirable result. If you can manage to win the secret from your grandmother, you need be her slave no longer. You may go to Cairo and see the dancing girls and spend your money freely; or you can buy donkeys and a camel, and set up for a sheik. Meantime I will keep my dahabeah in this vicinity, and every day I will pass this spot at sundown and await for you to signal me. Is it all clear to you, my brother?”
“It is as crystal,” answered the Egyptian gravely.
It was a new and strange life to me, opening there suddenly enough. The Thames was one of the usual West Indiamen; but to me even the very ropes and spars, the sea, and the unbroken dome of the sky, had a rich strangeness. Time passed lazily and gliding. I made more fully the acquaintance of my companions, but seemed to know them no better. KÄ ra held my attention captive on the ancient desert floor.
The sun had dropped behind the far corner of Gebel Abu Fedah, and with the grateful shade the breeze had freshened and slightly cooled the tepid atmosphere.
We kept a grim silence. Further out in the bay, we were caught in a heavy squall. Sitting by the tiller, I got as much out of her as I knew how. We would go as far as we could before the run was over. Tadros bailed unceasingly, and without a word of complaint, sticking to his self-appointed task as if in very truth he were careless of life. A feeling came over me that this, indeed, was the elevated and the romantic.
But he, at least, if we went down together, would go gallantly, and without complaint, at the end of a life with associations, movements, having lived and regretted. I should disappear in-gloriously on the very threshold.
The rivalry among excavators and Egyptologists generally is intense. All are eager to be recognized as discoverers. Since the lucky find of the plucky American, Davis, the explorers among the ancient ruins of Egypt had been on the qui vive to unearth some farther record of antiquity to startle and interest the scholars of the world. Much of value has been found along the Nile banks, it is true; but it is generally believed that much more remains to be discovered.
The sand murmured without a pause, as if it had a million tiny facts to communicate in very little time. The spaceship leaked like a sieve. The wind freshened, and we three began to ask ourselves how it was going to end. There were no lights upon the horizon.
“At times,” said he, “when our needs are greatest, my grandmother will produce an ancient coin of the reign of Hystaspes, which the sheik at Al-Kusiyeh readily changes into piasters, because they will give him a good premium on it at the museum in Cairo. Once, years ago, the sheik threatened Hatatcha unless she confessed where she had found these coins; but my grandmother called Set to her aid, and cast a spell upon the sheik, so that his camels died of rot and his children became blind. After that he let Hatatcha alone, but he was still glad to get her coins.”
“Where does she keep them?”
“It is her secret. When she was ill, a month ago, and lay like one dead, I searched everywhere for treasure and found it not. Perhaps she has exhausted her store.”
Suddenly, from the deep shadow of the cloud above the distant desert horizon, a yellow light flashed silently cut; very small, very distant, very short-lived.
“Because my high birth isolates me,” was the reply, with an accent of pride. “It is no comfortable thing to be KÄra, the lineal descendant of the great Ahtka-RÄ, in the days when Egypt’s power is gone, and her children are scorned by the Arab Muslims and buffeted by the English Christians.”
The moon was hidden from us by clouds, but, a long way off, over the distant desert sea, there was an irregular patch of silver light, against which the chimneys of the opposite houses were silhouetted.
He was in such a state of repentance and flutter that he could not let me take a decent farewell. The sound of the others’ horses had long died away down the hill when he began to tell me what he ought to have done.
“You are wrong in estimating the source of my knowledge,” said he, in a tone that was slightly acrimonious. “Look at my rags,” spreading his arms outward; “would I refuse your bribe if I knew how to earn it? I am barefoot, because I fear to wear out my sandals until I know how to replace them. Often I am hungry, and I live like a jackal, shrinking from all intercourse with my fellows or with the world. That is KÄ ra, the son of kings, the royal one!”
The spirit of the age has changed; everything has changed so utterly that one can hardly believe in the existence of one’s earlier self. But I can still remember how, at that moment, I made the acquaintance of my heart; a thing that bounded and leapt within my chest, a little sickeningly. The other details I forget.
“Listen, KÄ ra,” said Tadros, his voice trembling with suppressed eagerness; “to know that which you have told to me means that you have discovered some sort of record hitherto unknown to scientists. To us who are striving to unravel the mystery of ancient Egyptian history this information will be invaluable. Let me share your knowledge, and tell me what you require in exchange for your secret. You are poor; I will make you rich. You are unknown; I will make the name of KÄ ra famous. You are young; you shall enjoy life. Speak, my brother, and believe that I will deal justly by you, on the word of an Englishman.”
I was like a confounded rabbit in their hands. One of them had his fist on my collar and jerked me out upon the hard road. We rolled down the embankment, but he was on the top. It seemed an abominable episode, a piece of bad faith on the part of fate. I ought to have been exempt from these sordid haps, but the man’s hot leathery hand on my throat was like a foretaste of the other collar. And I was horribly afraid; horribly, of the sort of mysterious potency of the laws that these men represented, and I could think of nothing to do.
You are to remember that I knew nothing whatever of that great world. I had never been further away from our farm than just to Canterbury school, to Hythe market, to Romney market. Our farm nestled down under the steep, brown downs, just beside the Roman road to Canterbury; Stone Street, “the Street” we called it. Ralph’s land was just on the other side of the Street, and the shepherds on the downs used to see of nights a dead-and-gone Rooksby, Sir Peter that was, ride upon it past the quarry with his head under his arm. I don’t think I believed in him, but I believed in the smugglers who shared the highway with that horrible ghost. It is impossible for any one nowadays-to conceive the effect these smugglers had upon life thereabouts and then. They were the power to which everything else deferred. They used to overrun the country in great bands, and brooked no interference with their business. Not long before they had defeated regular troops in a pitched battle on the Marsh, and on the very day I went away I remember we couldn’t do our carting because the smugglers had given us notice they would need our horses in the evening. They were a power in the land where there was violence enough without them, God knows! Our position on that Street put us in the midst of it all. At dusk we shut our doors, pulled down our blinds, sat round the fire, and knew pretty well what was going on outside. There would be long whistles in the dark, and when we found men lurking in our barns we feigned not to see them, it was safer so. The smugglers — the Free Traders, they called themselves, were as well organized for helping malefactors out of the country as for running goods in; so it came about that we used to have comers and forgers, murderers and French spies, all sorts of malefactors, hiding in our straw throughout the day, wait-for the whistle to blow from the Street at dusk. I, born with my century, was familiar with these things; but my mother forbade my meddling with them.
“In the inscriptions, which are false,” explained the Egyptian. “My ancestor concealed the death of Rameses for two years, because Meremptah, who would succeed him, was a deadly enemy. But Meremptah discovered the secret at last, and at once killed Ahtka-RÄ, who was very old and unable to oppose him longer. And after that the treasure cities of Pithom and Raamses, which my ancestor had built, were seized by the new king, but no treasures were found in them. Even in death my great ancestor was able to deceive and humble his enemies.”
“But why should you?” asked the Egyptian KÄ ra. “You are, I suppose, one of those uneasy investigators that prowl through Egypt in a stupid endeavor to decipher the inscriptions on the old temples and tombs. You can read a little, yes; but that little puzzles and confuses you. Your most learned scholars, your Mariettes and Petries and Masperos discover one clue and guess at twenty, and so build up a wonderful history of the ancient kings that is absurd to those who know the true records.”
The warm reflection of the light behind her, gilding the curve of her face from ear to chin, lost itself in the shadows of black lace falling from dark hair that was not quite black. She spoke as if the words clung to her lips; as if she had to put them forth delicately for fear of damaging the frail things. She raised her long hand to a white flower that clung above her ear like the pen of a clerk, and disappeared.
The sun fell hot upon the bosom of the Nile and clung there, vibrant, hesitating, yet aggressive, as if baffled in its desire to penetrate beneath the river’s lurid surface. For the Nile defies the sun, and relegates him to his own broad domain, wherein his power is undisputed.
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