The Snake, the Crocodile, and the Dog Read Free

infrequently attracted the attentions of the jackals of the press, as he was pleased to call them.

I prefer to tell the truth whenever possible. Not only is honesty enjoined upon us by the superior moral code of our society, but it is much easier to stick to the facts than remain consistent in falsehood.

In this case the truth was not possible. Upon leaving the Lost Oasis (or the City of the Holy Mountain, as its citizens called it), we had sworn to keep not only its location but its very existence a secret. The people of that dying civilization were few in number and unacquainted with firearms, they would have been easy prey for adventurers and treasure hunters, not to mention unscrupulous archaeologists. There was also the less imperative but nonetheless important question of Nefret's reputation to be considered. If it were known that she had been reared among so-called primitive peoples, where she had been the high priestess of a pagan goddess, the rude speculation and unseemly jests such ideas inspire in the ignorant would have made her life unbearable. No, the true facts could not be made public. It was necessary to invent a convincing lie, and when forced to depart from my usual standards of candor, I can invent as good a lie as anyone.

Luckily the historical events then ensuing provided us with a reasonable rationale. The Mahdist rebellion in the Sudan, which began in 1881 and had kept that unhappy country in a state of turmoil for over a decade, was ending Egyptian troops (led, of course, by British officers) had reconquered most of the lost territory, and some persons who had been given up for lost had miraculously reappeared The escape of Slatin Pasha, formerly Slatin Bey, was perhaps the most astonishing example of well-nigh miraculous survival, but there were others, including that of Father Ohrwalder and two of the nuns of his mission, who had endured seven years of slavery and torture before making good their escape.

It was this last case that gave me the idea of inventing a family of kindly missionaries as foster parents for Nefret, both of whose real parents (I explained) had perished of disease and hardship shortly after their arrival. Protected by their loyal converts, the kindly religious persons had escaped the ravages of the dervishes but had not dared leave the security of their remote and humble village while the country was so disturbed.

Emerson remarked that in his experience loyal converts were usually the first to pop their spiritual leaders into the cook pot, but I thought it a most convincing fabrication and so, to judge by the results, did the press. I had stuck to the truth whenever I could— a paramount rule when one concocts a fictional fabrication— and there was no need to falsify the details of the desert journey itself. Stranded in the empty waste, abandoned by our servants, our camels dead or dying ... It was a dramatic story, and, I believe, distracted the press to such an extent that they did not question other more important details. I threw in a sandstorm and an attack by wandering Bedouin for good measure.

The one journalist I feared most we managed to elude. Kevin O'Connell, the brash young star reporter of the Daily Yell, was on his way to the Sudan even as we left it, for the campaign was proceeding apace and the recapture of Khartoum was expected at any time. I was fond of Kevin (Emerson was not), but when his journalistic instincts were in the ascendancy I would not have trusted him any farther than I could have thrown him.

So that was all right. The biggest difficulty was Nefret herself.

I would be the first to admit that I am not a maternal woman. I venture to remark, however, that the Divine Mother herself might have found her maternal instincts weakened by prolonged exposure to my son. Ten years of Ramses had convinced me that my inability to have more children was not, as I had first viewed it, a sad disappointment, but rather a kindly disposition of all-knowing