Death Warmed Over - By Kevin J. Anderson Page 0,21
room, Ramen Ho-Tep thumped the ancient scrolls down on the table, and dust wafted up, along with tiny flakes of dried papyrus. Robin had already set out six enormous volumes of legal cases and precedents.
She wrapped up a half-eaten tuna sandwich from her late lunch and set it on a credenza next to a can of diet cola. “Sorry for the mess. I was just catching up.”
“No worries,” said the mummy. “You should have seen the state of my tomb when the archaeologists broke in.”
“You speak English extremely well, Mr. Ho-Tep.” I’m accustomed to unnaturals having slurred diction, and the ones with Southern accents are almost impossible to understand.
“I spent nearly a century lying in the British Museum,” the mummy said. “One’s bound to pick up something of the language, even though I wasn’t actually aware. My body was loaned to the Metropolitan Natural History Museum shortly before the event you call the Big Uneasy . . . and then I woke up. That was a most distressing day, let me tell you! For scientific purposes, the archaeologists had unwrapped half of my bandages, and there I was, naked under the bright lights. If I’d still had any blood flow, I would have blushed quite furiously.”
Robin started jotting notes on her legal pad. “So, how can we help you, sir? I have the basics of your story, but I’d like my partner to be completely filled in.”
The mummy rested his elbows on the table and leaned forward. The sinews in his jaw snapped and clacked as he talked. “Due to the woeful state of your public education system, your citizens have little accurate knowledge of ancient Egypt. Most of what they think they know comes from those silly mummy movies, although I must admit that Arnold Vosloo did a creditable job of it. Good special effects.”
I didn’t tell him I was a Karloff man myself. Old school.
His head twitched, as if he were trying to focus on his thoughts again. “I was the pharaoh of all Egypt, but I do not have an inflated sense of my own importance. You’ve probably never heard of Ramen Ho-Tep. I’ve nothing to do with the dried noodles, I assure you—in fact, I’m thousands of years older than prepackaged food.” A sigh rattled out of his dry throat. “And now I’m merely . . .”
He seemed dejected. “I ruled for twenty floodings of the Nile before I succumbed to a fever caused by the bite of a tsetse fly. I was entombed in a lovely pyramid in the desert suburbs. The workers were killed, of course, the records struck, curses laid down—the usual privacy and security measures, but insufficient. Robbers ransacked the tomb within a century or two, and much later a team of British archaeologists removed my body.” Ho-Tep let out an indignant snort. “Apparently, if one calls oneself an ‘archaeologist’ rather than a ‘tomb raider,’ one receives far more respect. But the end result is the same.
“Now, being on display may sound glamorous, but it’s quite dull, I assure you. Once I awakened, it became clear that I needed to explain the true ways of life in ancient Egypt. I am uniquely qualified for the job, but those”—he inserted a guttural string of Egyptian words—“from the museum wouldn’t release me!”
Ramen Ho-Tep became more animated. His shoulders stiffened, his bones squeaked and bandages rustled, and he did look terrible to behold. Previously, I was skeptical about animated mummies who are supposed to be fearsome. I mean, how can anybody be afraid of something that couldn’t outrun a banana slug? But now, as the mummy unleashed his true anger, Robin and I both flinched.
“I wish to be emancipated! I must be freed. I was Pharaoh of all Egypt! I was a god. I am not a slave—I am no one’s property! And I should know, because I had a great many slaves of my own. Nevertheless, the museum insists that they own me.”
Robin, as usual, grew incensed and indignant on behalf of her client. “We have laws against this sort of thing, Mr. Ho-Tep. Slavery has been outlawed for more than a century and a half.” She turned to the law books stacked on the table, opened one of the thickest tomes, and riffled through the pages to where she had used a sticky note to mark a passage. “A wealth of case law has withstood every legal challenge.”
The mummy unrolled his own ancient scrolls to reveal faded hieroglyphics. “I brought my own case