Blood Lines Read Free

a new Buddha," the curator of the Far East Department called after them. "Second century BC. A beautiful little thing in alabaster and jade without a mark on it. You must come and see it soon."
    'Soon," Dr. Shane agreed, her hand still firmly holding her superior's arm. Not until they were almost at the workroom did she let go.
    'A new Buddha," he muttered, flexing his arm and watching the preparators maneuver the crate through the double doors of the workroom. "Of what historical significance is that? People are still worshiping Buddha. Just wait, just wait until we get this sarcophagus open and we'll wipe that smug temple-dog smile off his face."
    As the doors of the workroom swung closed behind him, the weight of responsibility for the sarcophagus lifted off his shoulders. There was still a lot to do, and any number of things that could yet go wrong, but the journey at least had been safely completed. He felt like a modern day Anubis, escorting the dead to eternal life in the Underworld, and wondered how the ancient god had managed to bear such an exhausting burden.
    He rested both hands on the crate, aware through the wood and the packing and the stone and whatever interior coffin the stone concealed, of the body that lay at its heart. "We're here," he told it softly. "Welcome home."
    The ka that had been so constant was now joined by others. He could feel them outside the binding, calling, being, driving him into a frenzy with their nearness and their inaccessibility. If he could only remember…
    And then, suddenly, the surrounding ka began to fade. Near panic, he reached for the one he knew and felt it moving away. He hung onto it as long as he could, then he hung onto the sense of it, then the memory.
    Not alone. Please, not alone again.
    When it returned, he would have wept if he'd remembered how.
    Refreshed by a shower and a good night's sleep plagued by nothing more than a vague sense of loss, Dr. Rax stared down at the sarcophagus. It had been cataloged-measured, described, given the card number 991.862.1-and now existed as an official possession of the Royal Ontario Museum. The time had come.
    'Is the video camera ready?" he asked pulling on a pair of new cotton gloves.
    'Ready, Doctor." Doris Bercarich, who took care of most of the departmental photography, squinted through the view finder. She'd already taken two films of still photography-one black and white, one color-and her camera now hung around the neck of the more mechanically competent of the two grad students. He'd continue to take photographs while she shot tape. If she had anything to say about it, and she did, this was going to be one well documented mummy.
    'Ready, Dr. Shane?"
    'Ready, Dr. Rax." She tugged at the cuffs of her gloves, then picked up the sterile cotton pad that would catch the removed seal. "You can start any time."
    He nodded, took a deep breath, and knelt. With the sterile pad in place, he slid the flexible blade of the palette knife behind the seal and carefully worked at the centuries old clay. Although his hands were sure, his stomach tied itself in knots, tighter and tighter as the seconds passed and his fear grew that the seal, in spite of the preservatives, could be removed only as a featureless handful of red clay. While he worked, he kept up a low-voiced commentary of the physical sensations he was receiving through the handle of the knife.
    Then he felt something give and a hairline crack appeared diagonally across the outer surface of the seal.
    For a heartbeat the only sound in the room was the soft whir of the video camera.
    A heartbeat later, the seal, broken cleanly in two, halves held in place by the preservative, lay on the cotton pad.
    As one, the Department of Egyptology remembered how to breathe.
    He felt the seal break, heard the fracture resonate throughout the ages.
    He remembered who he was. What he was. What they had done to him.
    He remembered anger.
    He drew on the anger for strength, then he threw himself