Conclusion: "Into History"  Life has its good days and its bad days, but some are so much better or so much worse than others that they become unforgettable. That Tu was alive made that day the most unforgettable of my life. I snatched at the stalk of dates he held out for me over the water's edge and pulled him in with it. We kissed so long underwater, it was a miracle we did not drown. When we surfaced again, Jakh and Wil were laughing at us on the bank, every one of us so hard and happy to be reunited that there was no question what had to happen next. The four of us rolled and tumbled over and around each other in the grass as if we never had sex before. No one cared whose body or which body part belonged to whom. Sprays of cum shot into my mouth, up my keister, into my ears and between my toes. It was an orgy of love. Dark had settled in by the time we fell away from one another exhausted, and the sky was filled with stars.
"Selket?" I asked. "In the old religion, which is now the new religion again," he said with a note of cynicism, "she was the goddess who presided over the moment of orgasm when the god Amun conceived Amenhotep III with his wife. Under Selket's ministrations, it was said to be an immaculate conception, which was a point of pride with Akhenaten. Amenhotep III was his father. Akhenaten, who had been Amenhotep IV before he changed his name after discovering Aten as the only god, was thus led to believe in his own divinity and his right to the throne."
"That may have spilled over into me," Tu added, "although I am not Akhenaten's blood kin, only his successor. It was ingrained in me throughout childhood by my brother Smenkhkare that in the unlikely event I succeeded to the throne---for as co-regent with Akhenaten, he was ahead of me in the line of succession and expected to live forever---I should sit the throne proudly for Akhenaten's adoption of me had made me spiritually his son. Thus, I had the touch of godhood in me, too! Jakh laughed. "Some of both, I would say! You had a sweet disposition, but you also had a temper which stung like a scorpion. Selket is often portrayed with a scorpion on her head. She is represented by the constellation of stars called Scorpio, which would be over there." He pointed to the sky. "I know Scorpio," I said. "It is still a star sign in my time. Speaking of which, Tu, I have not had enough of you yet. Let me feel your sting. Insert your scorpion here." I rolled over on my stomach. Ready for me, as always, he worked his way inside. I needed no lubrication. My cavity was still flooded with semen from at least one orgasm apiece from the other three. I was numb from the friction of anal sex. His supply of cum was now much depleted, so I accepted that it might take a long time for him to achieve ejaculation, every moment of which I treasured, wishing he might never pull out, staying in there forever. My head was turned sideways. His tongue swabbed out my ear; his teeth nibbled at the lobe. He rested with his full weight on my back, pinning me to the ground. The soft grass provided a nest for my member to slide back and forth in cadence with the rhythm of his thrusts. Despite the heated activity earlier in the evening, I came twice that way, warning him in advance each time so he could stop pushing and feel my sphincter squeeze his penis violently when I lost control. He moaned with each pulse of my anal muscle, licking my back like a dog. When his climax finally began to sweep over him, I felt his cock-thrusts change rapidly from the long into the short strokes. He drifted into euphoria, murmuring how much he loved me. His hands gripped me tightly by the shoulders. His elbows were locked into my sides. I pressed up against him to give him full penetration. We were celebrating the renewal of a love I had thought lost forever. We had a second chance, despite our enemies and their threat to our existence. That he was still alive attested to the power of Aten. As yet I had no answers to the whys and wherefores of the situation, but I had the man I loved taking his pleasure in my body, which was what mattered to me. He stiffened in the last instant before his orgasm. I felt the throbbing of ejaculation spurting its warmth into me. I held my breath and concentrated on this holy communion of imbibing the effluvium of Tu's ka as Aye had wanted to do. Aye's had failed because the soul can only be shared between those whom Aten's love has brought together. No sooner had his muscles relaxed than my sphincter tightened when my penis spurted its juice into the grass beneath my belly. Softening, unable to withstand the intense constrictions of my anal ring, his member slipped out. I winced, and he gave a deep sigh. The moon had risen. Jakh and Wil were sound asleep nearby, wrapped together on a patch of grass. "Come with me," Tu whispered. "I want to tell you what happened yesterday." He stepped into the water and swam to the far side of the pond. I followed, relishing the cool wetness that rinsed off the sweat which had been flooding out of my pores since the sex match began. He sat leaning against a palm when I reached him, patting the grass at his side. "Stretch out here with your head on my lap." I did so, resting the back of my head against the real treasures of Tutankhamen. "So much has taken place since the moment I last saw you when Aye entered my chambers," he began. "I now live in a world as foreign to me as was yours when Aten sent me there to meet you. Wil has been my salvation. There is a reason for everything, I suppose. Perhaps Aten resurrected him for the purpose of saving me. When Aye entered, it was the first step in activating a plot to assassinate me and remove me from power. He took me to the terrace above the main square of Amarna to display himself with me to show our solidarity to the people. He pulled me into an embrace and whispered that he was having you arrested at that very moment to be held hostage as a means of gaining my consent to his plan." "What was his plan?" I asked. "To force me to announce that he was to be my co-regent. Instinct told me that what he really wanted was legitimacy, which he would have won by sitting beside me in the governance of Kemet. I knew in my heart that at the first opportunity he would have me killed and say that I had met with an unfortunate accident, which would make him Pharaoh alone. I said no, and turned to walk away, but he clutched me like a falcon holds its prey, with his talons digging into my flesh until they brought blood. Here, see where he held me." He lifted his arm to show me. I kissed and licked the wounds. He chuckled softly. "O, my love, you do love me so! No one has ever loved me as acceptingly as you do, except for my Nefer." "Nefer?" I sat up in surprise. "You can't be speaking of Nefertiti!"
"Lie back, beloved, and keep your head where it belongs," he said with a smile. "Nefer is the best of my dogs. The name means 'Beauty.' I have the finest kennels in Kemet. I love dogs. I have never loved cats. Nefertiti has too many. They are always in the way, but dogs stand aside and are respectful. The only thing I miss from Amarna is Nefer. I thought of her when you licked my wounds. Once, I injured my knee in a fall. After the bandage came off, she sat beside me and licked it every day until it was healed. I called her 'Doctor Nefer' for awhile. It was more effective than anything the court doctors did for me. They are all magicians and sorcerers. I never trusted any of them the way I trusted Nefer. I used to hunt with Flying Carpet pulling the chariot while Nefer ran alongside. I never knew a dog so good at finding and flushing quarry. She could sniff out an antelope or an ostrich in places no one ever hunted because they thought there was nothing there. "I ate a huge omelet made from one ostrich egg at an ostrich farm in South Africa," I contributed. "Delicious! Now, go on with your story. "Yes, Aye had everything carefully planned, but things can go awry in the most careful of human plans. Only Aten's plan for each of us is what matters. Everything else must stand aside when Aten is in control. It was so yesterday. You were arrested, knocked unconscious, and taken away. I realized later as the pieces fell into place that it was for our protection that Aten removed you from the scene. Jakh and Wil had left my chambers before you, but they had seen Horemheb's guards coming with the young man who looked like me. He had been used as my double on several occasions. He was younger than I by two years, being only eighteen. I am twenty, but I feel older. After yesterday, I feel like an old man." "I am twenty-three," I said. "I had thought you were older than I." "I am," he grinned. "I am more than three thousand years older than you! That poor young man! I had talked with him once or twice. He had been forced to live a strange life because of his resemblance to me. He was taken from his parents and lived in a small room at the palace, always heavily guarded, like a prisoner, you see. When Jakh and Wil saw him, dressed as you and I were, they feared something evil was afoot. They returned to my chambers by another way and arrived in time to see you arrested. They knew they had no chance with a contingent of armed guards, so they used their heads. They lurked behind draperies that hung on a wall to observe. "I was out on the terrace arguing with Aye. Our being together in view of the public, embracing and talking as though we were friends, no doubt served his image in the public mind. While thus engaged, I had no idea you had been taken away, nor did I know that my double had arrived. At that moment, my wife appeared, with Nefertiti. They came in by the same entrance as Jakh and Wil, whom, of course, they did not see. Seeing all the soldiers gave them pause. They lingered near the draperies where our friends were hidden. Again, Aten's plan! They heard everything those two demons whispered together. "Nefertiti was seething because she had been excluded from the procession. My wife was enraged because she knew that she would be set aside in favor of you. They both knew that their glory had come to an end. My wife said: 'I have been used like a breed sow by Horemheb and Aye. They will pen me up and then steal my child!' Nefertiti railed: 'Your husband is corruption incarnate! He must not reign! Sekhmet has told me what to do.' My wife whispered back: 'I will help you. What must we do?' Nefertiti: 'You will give him the wine that I pour. This ring was made for me by a Syrian woman who knew about such things. It contains a tasteless, odorless poison. When I twist my hand a certain way, the poison will fall into the wine. It is slow to act, but in a few hours, his heart will simply stop beating. It will appear that he died of natural causes. No one will ever know.' Jakh made as if to jump out from behind the draperies and shout an alarm, but Wil prudently restrained him that they might hear more. "The women went quietly forward, almost unnoticed by anyone else in the room. Aye had called Horemheb to the terrace to convince me to make the announcement of Aye's co-regency to the public then and there. Nefertiti went to a table and poured a goblet of wine, doubtless twisting her hand for the poison to fall in. My wife, seeing my double surrounded by guards, ordered them to step aside that she might give her husband refreshment before the procession. The guards, knowing full well he was not I, were too much in awe of the wife of their Pharaoh to dare contradict her. My double, I suppose likewise overwhelmed, and probably flattered, accepted the wine and drank it down. "Their evil task done, the ladies left the room, looking smug and victorious, according to Wil. My unsuspecting double, having swilled better wine from the fatal goblet than he had ever drunk in his life, told the guards he had to relieve himself. One guard said he would fetch a jar for the double and left the room. The guards did not dare to allow him to piss in Pharaoh's chamber, so they took him into the corridor, where many courtiers were milling about in preparation for the procession. "Will and Jakh, still in hiding, heard a commotion outside in the hall. Jakh told Wil to stay while he went to investigate. Wil told me he heard screams and the sounds of a struggle, and then someone shouted, 'He got away!' A courtier rushed into the chamber, shouting: 'Pharaoh has been attacked! He may be dead!' We heard him clearly out on the terrace. I did not understand. I had not seen my double in the room, but Aye and Horemheb knew. They ran inside, leaving me alone. "Whereupon, Wil suddenly appeared before me and yanked me by the arm. 'Come, Pharaoh, they will kill you if you stay! We must get away from the palace! Quickly! Come!' I knew I was hearing the voice of Aten, not really of Wil. I felt no hesitation. There is a secret passage from the terrace to my stables. Akhenaten, who had the palace built, used it as a secret exit when he wished to go out alone into the hills and commune with Aten at sunrise. Only he, my brother, and I knew of its existence. Wil and I escaped through it. Flying Carpet is always saddled and ready for me in the stables. Wil leapt on a horse, and brought us here." "Which is how Jakh came to be with Horemheb at the Temple of Sekhmet," I surmised. "We had no idea what happened to Jakh, but Wil was adamant that if Jakh had survived, he would find his way here." I then told Tu about my adventure. When I described the furniture in the storeroom, he perked up. "Many of those are my things! They must have taken them from the palace while I was at Thebes. Yes, they have been planning in advance." When I informed him of the body I had seen and of its mummification and how distressed I was because I thought it was he, he leaned down to kiss me. "We have both been through much in the last two days," he said. "Make that the past three days," I added. "Only three days ago we buried the Road Angel in the Nile. It seems like a lifetime ago." "It was, my love. We have a new life now." "Yes, we do," I agreed. "May it be a long one. Now I know why there was no resurrection at the Temple of Sekhmet. It was your double, not you. Poor fellow! The poison must have acted faster than Nefertiti planned! He must have been brought to the palace to substitute for you in the procession if you refused. They meant to have someone kill you if you balked." I heard Tu snoring lightly. Worn out at last, he had fallen asleep. I was soon sleeping, too.
"Nefer!" he was saying. "Nefer! How did you come to be here?" Jakh shouted across the pond: "Quickly! They must have sent the dog to find us! I saw her at the Temple of Sekhmet. They can't be far behind." "Put Flying Carpet in the traces with the mare," Tu yelled before diving into the pond. Wil had done it by the time we reached the other side. I was no horseman to compare with the others. I had scarcely ever ridden a horse at all. Jakh took the reins of the chariot. I rode with him. Tu and Wil leapt into the saddles of the remaining two horses. From the top of the hill, we saw a cloud of dust about ten minutes away. Jakh thought it might be fifteen or twenty soldiers. "There is a narrow pass nearby," said Wil, that will take us to the Nile north of Amarna. Everyone there will be heading south from Amarna to Thebes. It will be hard for our followers to find us. They will probably think we have gone deeper into the hills. What about the bitch?" "She will follow me," said Tu. "She has found her quarry. She knows her job is done." We sped away. Wil was right. The narrow pass would be hard to find for anyone who did not know it was there. "Wil told me this morning how he made Pharaoh leave the palace. He asked me what happened after that," Jakh shouted at one point along the way. "I want to know, too," I shouted back. "When they took Pharaoh's double into the hall, the guards clustered on the side facing out to the courtiers so they would not see the man they thought was Pharaoh pissing in a jar. The idiots thus left him essentially unguarded. A man rushed in from behind and struck the double at the back of the head with a hammer he had hidden in his tunic. The double screamed and fell. In the confusion, the man escaped. When I came out of Pharaoh's chambers, I heard witnesses crying: 'The foreigner! The foreigner! He did it! He killed Pharaoh!' Now everyone thinks a foreigner did him in." My thoughts raced back to the confrontation with Aye when he accused me, and Horemheb's warning against foreigners, "...do not ever forget what a foreigner has done to our King Tutankhamen!" I had no doubt the foreigner was an assassin hired by Aye or Horemheb to kill Tu, but he killed the double by mistake, then fled. They needed a scapegoat. That was me! And when I declared myself to be Aten in the morgue and said that Tu's ka was not there and set out on my quest, it was only a question of time until Aye came to his senses and realized I was no divine apparition. He would have no choice but to send Horemheb after me in hopes of finding Tu. A dead Pharaoh who was not a dead Pharaoh provided a massive threat to the power Aye had seized. Tu, and I, had to be destroyed. The pass ended abruptly when the hills flattened out on a bank of the Nile. We saw no river traffic, but the black smoke of Amarna burning curled high into the sky far to the south. Dismounting, we watered the horses and knelt to drink ourselves. The water was fresh and pure. Nefer crouched beside Tu and drank her fill, then pressed against her master as if she never wanted to be separated from him again. I understood how she felt. "We are safe now," said Wil. "What is next for us, I do not know, but, Pharaoh, we must get you out of Kemet somehow. There will be no place to hide." "Ah!" sighed Tu. "If only we had my magic ankh!" "Would that really help?" I asked, then told him about the golden box at the mortuary and of finding the scarabs and the ankh and about the scene I staged to make my escape. "The ankh!" cried Tu. "Do you have it still?" I went to the chariot and took it and the scarabs out of an empty leather quiver used for holding arrows which was attached inside. I gave them to Tu. He kissed them all. "With these," he said, "Aten will save us all. Let us pray for deliverance." "A moment, Sire," Jakh interrupted. "We shall be happy to pray, but Wil and I decided when we returned from the future that we've had enough of other worlds. This is our time. Kemet may no longer be our place, but I hear that the lands of Mesopotamia are fertilized by the Tigris and the Euphrates much like our Valley of the Nile. Wil and I could settle there. You are both welcome to come with us." "We shall see what Aten has in mind," Tu replied. "Let us kneel beneath His Sun Disk and listen for His voice." We prayed in silence for only a few minutes before Tu suddenly spoke. "I know. I know. Thank you, Aten." Turning to us, he said: "Jakh and Wil, these scarabs are for you. They have great value. You can sell them and use the money to carve a new life. My love and I," he took my hand, "are going home. Jakh, I leave Flying Carpet in your charge. Wil, Nefer will be your dog. Forgive her for finding me. She loves me more than her own life and would never do anything to hurt me if she knew. Goodbye, friends. Perhaps somewhere we shall meet again." He placed the ankh in my hand and entwined his fingers with mine as he had at Karnak. I said good-bye to Jakh and Wil and thanked them for all they had done. "Come," said Tu, "we shall walk along the Nile." We began to walk away. Nefer trotted behind. "No, Nefer," Tu scolded, "you cannot go with us. Go to Wil. He is your master now." We walked faster. Still, she tagged along. Then, the ankh we held between us vibrated slightly and new energy swept through my legs. I felt the lifting off the ground I had felt before as if I were being propelled forward by an unseen force. I looked at Tu. He was struggling to keep his balance. I looked down. Nefer's jaws were wrapped around his ankle. "She will not let me go!" cried Tu. "She saps my energy! I cannot hang on! It is the power of her love!" I felt his fingers slipping away. Desperate, I summoned up all my strength, but there was little I could do. It was if I were a spirit, disembodied, light as air, flying between two worlds. I heard Tu shouting far away and strained my ears to hear: "I love you! I will find you if it takes a thousand years! I will come to you wherever you are! You will always be my love!" He slipped away, and with him went the ankh. I lost consciousness, but woke up with a start to find myself standing under moonlight in the Great Hall at Karnak again, in the same spot where Tu had stepped out of the shadows and swept me back more than three thousand years to the Valley of the Nile. Frantic, I searched through every corner, then heard a voice behind me. "Naughty boy! You have missed my lecture, and now we are ready to leave!" It was the female tour guide from the ship. "Come, come, the tour is waiting for you in the buses. We are going back to Luxor now." Dazed, unable to protest, lost, desolate, alone, I went with her, faintly hoping Tu might be waiting on board as a deckhand once again. He was not. Nor was he anywhere. In the next weeks, I went to the ruins of Amarna where they told me there had never been a pyramid, but I knew better. I searched for the ruins of the estate in the hills and found nothing, but there were ruins where the Temple of Sekhmet had stood. At the Cairo Museum, I recognized some of the furnishings I had seen in the storeroom where I was imprisoned. I looked up the dynasties and saw that Aye had ruled four years before being succeeded by Horemheb at his death. Horemheb was the first of the warrior Pharaohs. He and Aye had reinstated all facets of the old religion and erased so many traces of the reigns of Akhenaten, Smenkhkare, and Tutankhamen that hardly any hard evidence of anything about them remained. Tutankhamen was referred to as a "boy-king" and was thought to have died of an illness at the age of eighteen. I knew that it was not Tu whom Howard Carter had found in the tomb, but the double, and that he had been murdered by poison and a blow to the head. Some of that was proved in later years, about the poison and the blow to the head, but they never got to the truth, and I doubt they ever will. As for me, I overstayed my Egyptian visa and left the country in a hurry. I saw more of the world in the next forty-odd years, had love affairs, many wonderful adventures, and acquired many dear friends, but all I ever wanted was Tu. Passing through my sixties, I was not in the best of health after a serious heart attack and seven bypasses, and I was quite alone Then, one day, I posted a letter on my Internet e-mail list about an adventure in my past. I got many letters in response, but one stood out from the rest. It was from a young man who lived only a hundred miles away in a city I would be visiting the next weekend. He wrote me how much he had enjoyed my posting and hoped that someday we might meet. I wrote back and mentioned that I would be in the city. Could we get together for a Japanese dinner at my favorite restaurant in Japantown? I would be nearby visiting with Japanese friends. Yes, said his reply, let's do that. I was standing on a corner in front of a busy market at the appointed time. People were everywhere. I looked up and down the street. I had no idea what he looked like, but he had seen my picture on the Internet so there would be no problem in his recognizing me. I waited. He was late. Perhaps he might not come at all. My car was parked in the market's garage. The entry was a few feet away. I turned in that direction, having decided not to wait. That's when I saw a face that gave me pause. The man was in the middle of the crowd walking toward me. The closer he came, the more my heart pounded. I broke out in a sweat. Could it be? "Ben?" he said. "Sorry I'm late." I could hardly speak. He looked nearly the same as he had in the 14th century BC, a little older, perhaps, by about ten or twelve years. I had aged more than forty, but his preference in this life was for older men, Aten be praised! We became good friends and then weekend lovers and then, about ten months later, we decided to share our lives. That was more than three years ago. He has never had a dog, and after my experience with Nefer, I don't want one, either. Nor has he had a cat, and after Sekhmet, that's okay, too. He didn't know what an ankh was until I wrote this story, but everything else about him is just like Tu. Once, he said to me, "I've been looking for you all my life." For how many lives, I wondered, in how many worlds? He doesn't have to know who he was then because he knows very well who he is now: my Pharaoh, and that is enough for me. I live in his kingdom. It may not be the Valley of the Nile, but denial is more than a river in Egypt, and I deny him no part of me.
THE END?
  "Have a nice day amongst your townsmen!"
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"Selket has been good to us this evening," said Jakh between deep breaths, lying on his back to look up at the stars.
They say I was a cute little boy (see tomb sculpture at right), but I must also have been rather an arrogant brat."
I opened my eyes in daylight with silky hair moving over my face. A large female dog stood above me, wagging its long, bushy tail. I rolled away and saw a Saluki, desert-hunter and dog of pharaohs, lapping at Tu's face. A symbol of wealth and status even in my time, Salukis had a pure bloodline going back 9000 years, being the first domesticated canine. I had seen them only in paintings although they were still highly prized in the Arab world in the 20th century.